But not always.
In fact, at times I haven't felt like
singing. I've been impatient, frustrated, and rebellious. Inwardly I
stamped my feet like a pouting child. I didn't always sing a happy
song while walking through some dark and fearsome valley or through a
fiery trial or while nearly drowning in some circumstantial flood.
Like the captured people of God who were carried away to Babylon in
ancient days, I have sometimes asked how I could be expected to sing
when my heart aches and my tears flow. I've “hung my harp on a
willow tree” and no song crossed my lips.
Sometimes I've been confused when God
is silent to my prayers and seems to overlook my urgent needs. When
His hand doesn't seem to be moving on my behalf even when I've called
out to Him in desperation. Nevertheless, through long experience, I
perceive that God doesn't blow trumpets to announce His plans in
advance for the life agenda of His children. He promised once for all
that His plans for me are good and not evil, to give me a future and
a hope.
Without fanfare His plans simply unfold like the petals of a beautiful flower—silently and fragrantly and according to His perfect timing—for His pleasure and for my happiness too. With the patience of His eternal Fatherhood, Abba God has put up with me through the long life He is generously granting me. He comforts and assures me with His eternal, unchanging, unconditional love when I misunderstand His guidance.
Without fanfare His plans simply unfold like the petals of a beautiful flower—silently and fragrantly and according to His perfect timing—for His pleasure and for my happiness too. With the patience of His eternal Fatherhood, Abba God has put up with me through the long life He is generously granting me. He comforts and assures me with His eternal, unchanging, unconditional love when I misunderstand His guidance.
Hindsight is revealing. It is as if I
were blindfolded and yet walking with my hand in God's hand, trusting
Him to guide me over the rough places, avoid the detours, and draw me
on to reach His predestined goal. In my latter years I haven't wanted
to keep walking uphill; it is too tiring. My feet drag and my energy
flags.
I've even suggested to the Lord that
it might be time for me to retire. But His loving silence seems to
remind me that "retire" rhymes with "reach higher!"
He encourages me to press on the Upward Way, to desire More, to
stretch my spirit, to seek to draw closer to Him.
Looking in life's rear view mirror
now, I'm beginning to understand how all the experiences the Lord
brought me through were meant to position me step by step into the
place and circumstances in which I find myself now at the summit of
my life. I would never have dreamed where God's guidance would take
me, but it has been all good!
A hymn familiar to me from my youthful
years as a Christian by Fanny J. Crosby, the famous songwriter of a
past century, expresses it well:
“All the way my Savior leads me;
What have I to ask beside? Can I doubt His tender mercy, Who thru
life has been my Guide? Heavenly peace, divinest comfort, Here by
faith in Him to dwell! For I know whate’er befall me, Jesus doeth
all things well...This my song through endless ages: Jesus led me all
the way!”
When I first sang that song as a
teenager looking dreamily down the misty and idealistic corridors of time to
seemingly endless years of unknown adventures, I could not imagine
what “all the way” and “whate’er befall me” could involve.
With youthful trust I simply put my hand in the hand of Jesus to
“lead me all the way.”
He has been faithful! He has never left me
or forsaken me. Now at the summit of life with the mature trust of
years, I put my hand in the hand of Jesus to “lead me the rest of
the way.”
And that
is a good reason to “take my harp off the willow tree” and sing!
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