A Prayer for Hospice Care

Listen to me read this prayer.

Father of mercies, Comfort of the afflicted,

Walk with us through this dark valley

As we walk our loved one home to You.

Strengthen us to bear up under the dual weights of caregiving and grief.

Receive the service we render her 

As an oblation poured out at the feet of Jesus.

Let Your compassion flow through us

In care that honors her dignity as Your child,

Made in Your image.

Make us know Your presence in our most secret hearts.

Catch our tears in Your bottle,

As we grieve what we have lost and are losing

And we anticipate the loss to come.

Give us Your Spirit of gentleness with each other

Despite nerves frayed by sorrow and fatigue.

Bless the helpers You have sent us for their kindness and care.

Let Your presence and peace settle upon our loved one too, Lord.

Grant her a painless transition to Your presence

When the tally of her days is complete.

Thank You for the hope of the resurrection

And the life of the world to come.

Mercifully hear our prayer through the name of the risen Christ our Savior.

Amen.

Psalm 27 and the "One Thing" We Need at Three in the Morning

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One thing I ask from the Lord,
this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
and to seek him in his temple.
For in the day of trouble
he will keep me safe in his dwelling;
he will hide me in the shelter of his sacred tent
and set me high upon a rock.
Then my head will be exalted
above the enemies who surround me;
at his sacred tent I will sacrifice with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make music to the Lord.

Psalm 27:4-6, NIV

Our dawn sky today

What is your “one thing?” If the Lord told you, as He did Solomon, that he would give you any one thing you asked, what one thing would you seek? Health, family, financial security? Success, influence, popularity? Wisdom, advanced degrees, expertise? Marriage, children, reconciliation, forgiveness?

In Psalm 27:4 and elsewhere, David—the man after God’s own heart—says that his “one thing” is to dwell with God, to behold Him face to face.

This is the third essay in our series reflecting on Psalm 27. In this psalm, God through David has given us a prayer-song for when we are afraid of the dark: whatever kind of dark, literal darkness or emotional and spiritual darkness. David seeks shelter in God’s personal presence with confidence borne out of His past rescues, and so can we. In the first post, we considered the themes and structure of the prayer as a whole. In the second post, we reflected on the first section of three verses. In that first section (27:1-3), David describes his experience of God’s saving defense. In this post we are looking at the second section (vv. 4-6), in which David expresses his expectant desire for God’s sheltering presence.

In David’s time, the tabernacle had already passed into cultural memory. Only the ark of the covenant, which was the gold-covered chest holding the tablets of the law God gave to Moses, remained. It had been captured by the Philistines before David’s time but was returned in David's lifetime to Jerusalem, God’s chosen city for the Hebrews to worship Him. It was housed in a tent, but not the beautiful, God-designed tent of meeting from Moses’ time. The temple, however, had not yet been built. David lived between the tabernacle of the past and the temple yet to come.

David desperately wanted to build a glorious house for the ark representing God’s presence; it would be the one designated place for ritual sacrifices to occur. When he told his desire, however, the Lord told him that David was not to build Him a house, but instead, God would build David a house. A dynastic house. And David’s son Solomon would in fact be the one to build a house for the worship of Yahweh, the God of Israel. We call this promise the Davidic covenant; in it, God promised that David’s descendants would be the rightful rulers of Israel. (This conversation can be read in 2 Samuel 7.)

Since David could not do what he wanted, he did what he could. He dedicated the spoils of his battles to the splendor of the temple to come.  Moreover, David told Solomon in 1 Chronicles 28:19 that the plans he was giving his son had been revealed to David by God Himself. To some extent, in some spiritual sense, David glimpsed what the temple would be, though it was not build during his lifetime. He even wrote a prayer-song for its dedication, as the epigraph of Psalm 30 notes.

In the above verses from Psalm 27, David freely uses a variety of terms for God’s dwelling: house of the Lord, temple, dwelling, shelter, and sacred tent (or tabernacle). The common connection among them all is the God who dwells there. More than anything in the world—and  David had wealth, power, influence, celebrity, and success—David wanted to dwell with God. In God’s presence, he finds beauty, shelter, victory, worship, and joy.

With Him, every wilderness was a castle, a paradise; without Him, every castle was a wilderness.

The New Testament reveals that Jesus is the true tabernacle and temple (John 1:14; 4:21-24; Hebrews 8:1-2, 5; 9:8, 11, 21, 23-28; 10:19-25). Jesus is for all time the presence of God in human flesh. He is the dwelling place of God.

Revelation indicates that all the tabernacles and temples of the past pointed forward to the new creation on the way to us, when the dwelling of God will be with men in the fullest possible way: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He shall dwell [tabernacle] among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be among them, and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes,; and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passe away’” (Revelation 21:3-4, NASB1995). In that age there will be no more temple, “for the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb, are its temple” (Rev. 21:22, NASB 1995).

Do you remember from the first essay in this series that I said, when I am afraid of the dark, when I am in a three-o’clock season of the soul, the two things I want most are a light and a person. Last time we focused on the light God gives. This time David points our attention back to a person, the person of the Triune God.

David’s “one thing” to dwell in God’s presence and gaze on His loveliness is the birthright of all who have been born again into God’s family by grace through faith. John’s gospel, in particular, emphasizes that the believer dwells or abides in God, and God abides in Him. We who believe in Jesus are never separated from God’s presence. He is nearer than our next breath. He is intimately acquainted with all our ways. He never leaves us alone in the darkness, and the darkness is not even dark to Him (Psalm 139).

He is not repelled by our sorrow, brokenness, and sin. No matter what we are going through right now, we are never “too much” for the Lord Jesus. In fact, the Puritan preacher Samuel Rutherford wrote from his imprisonment for the gospel, “There is no sweeter fellowship with Christ than to bring our wounds and our sores to him” (The Loveliness of Christ, Kindle location 130). The young Scottish pastor Robert Murray M’Cheyne advised, “Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief! Live much in the smiles of God. Bask in his beams” (Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 293).

His love enlightens our darkness. His presence comforts our loneliness. Should we lose all lesser “one things” as Job did, should we even lose our earthly lives, we have enough and more in Christ Jesus. Any other thing we place on the throne of our lives will eventually disappoint, but Jesus never will. His love is better than health, wealth, power, or fame. His presence is better than family, earthly friendship, marriage, or children. “His love hath neither brim nor bottom. Go where ye will, your soul shall not sleep sound but in Christ’s bosom. I find that our wants qualify us for Christ” (Samuel Rutherford, The Loveliness of Christ, Kindle location 177).

Even when we feel our lives have hit rock-bottom, we have not found the bottom of His mercies, grace, love, and kindness. His love is deeper than our deepest needs and wounds. His love is stronger than whatever holds us in bondage. His love is greater than all we lack or lose.

Is this finding you in a season of darkness, beloved? Take your wants and your wounds to Jesus. Let His smile shine into your darkness. Lean into His presence by faith, if you cannot by feeling. If you can’t say with David that the Lord is your one thing, let’s ask together that it may be so.

Please pray with me.

“Grant, most sweet and loving Jesus, that I may seek my repose in You above every creature; above all health and beauty; above every honor and glory; every power and dignity; above all knowledge and cleverness, all riches and arts, all joy and gladness; above all things visible and invisible; and may I seek my repose in You above everything that is not You, my God. You alone are most beautiful and loving, You alone are most noble and glorious above all things. In You is every perfection that has been or ever will be. Therefore, whatever You give me besides Yourself, whatever You reveal to me concerning Yourself, and whatever You promise, is too small and insufficient if I do not see and fully enjoy You alone. For my heart cannot rest or be fully content until, rising above all gifts and every created thing, it rests in You” (Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ).

I ask these things in the name of Christ Jesus our light and our love. Amen.

Double Portion

Gray hairstreak butterfly on unidentified white flower

 "As I think of you I think of words written by one who warred and suffered about six hundred years ago, Raymond Lull. 'Say, O Lover,' asked the Beloved, 'if I double thy trials, wilt thou still be patient?' 'Yea,' answered the Lover, 'so that Thou double also my love.' I am quite sure that the Beloved will double the love of His Lover, if at any time He doubles the trials....

"I give you Hebrews 10:35, 36 for the worst days that will ever come. 'Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, having done the will of God, ye may receive the promise.' I commit you to Him who bequeathed His peace to us just before He faced His cross. I commit you to Him who is your best beloved. He will never leave thee nor forsake thee; the work of righteousness (which is obedience) shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever."

~Amy Carmichael, Candles in the Dark, 102

The Ebony Dog: A Love Story

Today is the 5th anniversary of losing my Ebony Dog. Missing him, I sorted through my blog posts about him. They tell the story pretty well.🐾

If you only read one, I suggest this one:

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2021/06/the-electing-love-of-god-and-ebony-dog.html

In rough chronological order, here are all:

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2016/07/june-2016-eight-years-ago-today-ebony.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2017/10/sermon-on-sofa-from-archives.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2011/05/long-and-short-of-it-ebonys-corner.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2011/04/eucharisteo-and-what-cat-left.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2013/02/ugos-and-broken-cisterns.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2012/04/what-love.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2011/12/dirty-truth.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2018/06/i-wait-for-you-from-archives-ebonys.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2017/10/velcro-dog.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2018/06/12-things-you-may-not-know-about-ebony.html

https://www.crumbsfromhistable.com/2021/06/the-electing-love-of-god-and-ebony-dog.html

Unexpected Providence: a Love Story

 Without regular excavation and remembrance, the miraculous origin story of a marriage can be buried like a time capsule at the heart of the snowball of days into weeks into months into decades that accumulate so quickly. Today, our anniversary, I take my spade of sentences in hand to dig through the accretion of mundane moments to remember where we started. 

 

The United States had soldiers in Vietnam. A new decade was learning to walk. The baby boom had subsided into a baby bust, but no one would know that from the first indignant cry of the second son and last child of Baptist missionaries in East Africa. He spent most of his childhood outside, barefoot, climbing avocado trees and running through tea plantations. He learned to sing and imagine, to improvise and hold plans loosely. Even though he had four older siblings, the demands of missionary life meant they were away at boarding school for most of his first decade. He had an imaginary friend and real friends at school, so he did not want for companionship. 

 

Nine months and two weeks after that boy’s first cry, on the other side of the world, the first daughter was born to an Irish Catholic mother and Italian Catholic father. She spent most of her childhood inside, in ballet slippers, practicing scales on the piano and making up dances to present to any adult she could convince to play the audience. She learned to sing and imagine, to read and snuggle into nests in corners and pillow forts and under the furniture. She had two sisters whose growing up was tightly intertwined with hers. She had a best friend at school and an imaginary friend named Pinky who once had a door slammed on her. The books on her shelves were teeming with fellowship as well, so she did not want for company. 

 

As the years passed, the boy confessed faith in Christ as his Savior and was baptized by his father. He had a beautiful voice that eventually opened doors to sing in public. He learned the Brahms Requiem for All-State Choir and made the cut. On the soccer pitch, he played goalie and earned state honors there as well. In adolescence he sensed the Lord calling him to music ministry, and his church affirmed that. He entered the renowned music school of a state university, intending to major in voice and become a church musician. 

 

As for the girl, she didn’t come to know Jesus as her Savior, Lord, and beloved Friend until high school. By this time her family had left the church of her infancy, but the instrument of her conversion was not her church but God’s Word, which she was reading in preparation for a choir solo. In adolescence she sensed the Lord calling her to music ministry, and her church affirmed that. She entered the sacred music program of a small, church-run liberal arts college, intending to complete that and a masters of sacred music to become a church musician. 

 

Neither path turned out as expected. 

 

The boy found he didn’t love practicing enough to sustain a music major at his school. He changed course and completed a degree that could incorporate his completed music classes and equip him with computer skills. And allow him to finish on time. While completing his degree, he discovered a Bible church nearby and immersed himself in its college ministry and short-term missions. His ministry dream shifted from music to missions, and he raised support, sold or gave away everything he owned, and prepared to move to Eastern Europe to share the gospel and make disciples. 

 

But that fell through, and he spent a year in ministry in Cambodia instead. 

 

Meanwhile, the girl faced heartbreak and disillusionment, discovering in her freshman year of college that her church didn’t believe what she thought it did. She tested its teachings against the Bible, which she was reading cover-to-cover for the first time. Try as she might, she could not make them reconcile. She changed course and left university. Bereft of church community and what she thought was God’s blueprint for her adult life, she couldn’t see a path forward in any other major. She did not finish on time. When the boy was in Cambodia, she was embarking on a new course of study in English  through the distance-learning programme of the University of London. While she studied, she worked in the public school system and dreamed of going to seminary and becoming a missionary. Through her sister, she discovered the same Bible church which had sent the boy overseas. She drove an hour each way on Sundays and at least once during the week to be as involved as she could be while working and studying for her degree. She never met the boy there, even after he returned from Cambodia and began seminary himself. 

 

Eight years after she graduated from high school, she earned the credential needed for acceptance to seminary. The same seminary where her pastor had studied. The same seminary, as it happens, that the boy attended. The summer before her classes began, she stayed with a friend near the church and was able to attend early-morning missions prayer one week. The boy was there too. After all, he worked for the missions office. He introduced himself and asked the usual questions. When he learned that she wanted to move to that town and didn’t yet have work, he picked up the phone and called his former employer to help her get an interview there. She was grateful but also unsettled. This seemed awfully friendly for a first encounter. She was not interested in a boy. Her heart belonged to Greek and Hebrew. 

 

By this time he was in his final year of a master's degree and eagerly anticipating life as one of the first missionaries sent out directly by their church after graduation. She was a new student, feeling like a deer caught in the open meadow during hunting season, desperately looking for one or two safe people to hide behind. In her first class on her first day, she discovered three other girls from her church were there too. Two of them knew her sister, so that gave instant connection. They shared the same second class too, so they all sat together again. Then came chapel, where the girls met up with some boy students from the same church and everyone sat together in a group. Then they all meandered as a unit to the cafeteria for lunch. The boy was part of that group, and sometimes they would end up next to each other in chapel. He held the hymnal and they harmonized. He had a beautiful voice. 

 

Even though the girl was not interested in dating, let alone anything more, ten years before, as a teenager reading Elisabeth Elliot’s Passion and Purity, she had determined that, if ever there was a boy for her, she wanted to follow the courting model and not the cultural norm of dating. She also, like Elisabeth, wrote out a list of qualities she considered important in her future mate, should such a one exist. 

 

As the weeks rolled by, lunchtime conversations—all in a group, mind you—ticked one item after another after another off that list. How unsettling. What could this mean? 

 

The boy was leading a book club for the church singles ministry. The first book planned was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. She still wasn’t interested in the boy, but she was very much interested in discussing that beloved book. She joined the book club, but only for the literary cameraderie, you understand. 

 

The next semester, everyone in the lunch group had classes on different days. Everyone, that is, except the boy and the girl. Another friend of the girl, not from their church, joined them sometimes, but many times she could only stay for part of lunch. Other people popped in here and there, but often the boy and the girl found themselves at the group table alone together in the crowded cafeteria. 

 

Boys generally made the girl nervous, but this boy didn’t. That freed her to engage in conversation without wanting to hide behind something. They became friends, good friends. Through these hours of conversation, they learned that they both held to a courting ideal, both felt called to missions in Asia, both loved old hymns and singing, and both had similar missionary ideals around support-raising and interacting with the people they would serve. The VENN diagram of their reading and musical tastes seemed to overlap more than it differed, and their theological convictions matched completely. Still, the girl’s heart belonged to Biblical languages, and the boy’s heart, as it turns out, belonged to one of the girl’s friends. 

 

As spring began to bloom on the trees and in the gardens, the girl began to realize that she would be happy talking like that for a whole lifetime of meals. It didn’t matter, though, because the boy had made it clear he only wanted friendship. 

 

Until he didn’t. As he told it, he woke up one morning and it was like a lightbulb went on overhead. His affections changed that quickly. 

 

The day before his birthday, he wasn’t at the lunch table. The girl was eating with her friend. She was, however, supposed to give the boy a ride to book club later. He stopped by long enough to hand the girl a missions article. “It might be interesting to talk about on the drive.” 

 

That proved to be his final test of missiological compatibility before he asked a question that changed life for both of them in the most unexpected ways. His courage failed when they stopped for a quick supper, though. They continued to book club the same as always. Afterward, when she drove him to where he’d parked to catch his morning carpool, he suggested stopping for coffee or tea. Even though they’d just had book club at a coffee shop. (It’s a good thing that town abounded with them.) 

 

There he asked to court her. She said, “I couldn’t think of a nicer honor.” He said, “What?” (Coffee shops are loud, even on the porch outside.) She repeated herself. He said, “Well, I guess I need to talk to your parents now.” She handed him the brick of a mobile phone she used when she would be driving late at night. 

 

Their courtship was brief, not quite 5 months from that evening until their marriage. The boy was sure they would have adequate support to spend the new year in India, their designated home base, and they wanted as much time as possible to adjust to marriage before that. They planned a small wedding that was really a worship service, complete with congregational singing and a gospel presentation. That August Saturday was as hot and bright as expected in Texas, but no one minded, or if they did they didn’t complain. 

 

The missions pastor emeritus visited the bride before the service and commented on her lack of nervousness. She said, “Why should I be nervous when I’m in the center of God’s will?”  The pastor would then tell the assembled family that before his opening prayer. The girl would later learn how very painful the center of God’s will may be, but not that day. That day went almost entirely smoothly, and the couple’s first act as man and wife was to take the Lord’s Supper together. 

 

Being almost as poor as the proverbial church mice, they agreed to exchange wedding gifts that didn’t cost money. The girl force-fed herself coffee until she could tolerate it without gagging, and they both presented, with no prior arrangement, framed original poems with roses as accents to each other on their wedding eve. 

 

This unexpected marriage has continued to unfold in unexpected ways. Instead of India they moved to Thailand. Instead of moving overseas by the next January, they needed an additional year to build a support team. Life on the field involved many, many more medical appointments than anyone expected. By the end of that year, instead of homesick they were back home, the girl sick with what turned out to be autoimmune disease. 

 

The theme song of their friendship and courtship was “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” It seemed to appear in every worship gathering, formal and informal. In this unexpected twist of providence, it proved true again. The Lord provided a new job and career at the same company the boy had called to get the girl a job interview at their very first meeting. Instead of earning his living in gospel ministry and doing a little computer work on the side, he earned his living at the computer and taught Bible studies at church on the side. 

 

The Lord has been with him, as He was with Joseph and Daniel, and given him success in this field he never would have pursued on his own initiative. It has allowed him to keep his promise to provide for the girl and ease that one burden as much as he can. It has allowed him to bless others with career assistance they didn’t expect. 

 

Instead of training church leaders in Asia, they served together in adult Sunday school. When the unlikely opportunity arose to help disciple a small group of gifted and delightful high school students, they decided it wouldn’t hurt just to meet the youth, even though obviously youth ministry was not their calling. Three and a half years later, they celebrated the group’s graduation from high school. The boy even co-led the students on a mission trip to Guatemala. One of them is in vocational ministry today. They never would have chosen that for themselves, but God’s providence led in unexpected ways to the most joyful and fruitful shared ministry of their marriage. 

 

Instead of writing a missionary newsletter together, the girl now writes her blog alone. (It was the boy’s idea.) She still has far more medical appointments than she ever thought possible. She still loves God’s Word and missions and dusts off her Greek as needed. She gave up Hebrew for the boy. 

 

So much has changed in 23 years. They would not have believed the hairpin turns and dead ends on that first day, even if the prophet Samuel himself had told them. Some of them have been almost unbearably painful. Others have been almost unbearably sweet. But through all the unexpected providences, God’s faithfulness has been the starlight and shepherd’s crook guiding them. He has not left them or forsaken them, even in the darkest of storms, and He will not forsake you who belong to Him. 

 

Happiest of anniversaries to my one and only. You are still my favorite person to harmonize with. 

I love you. (You know.) 

c