Author: joyfuldomesticity

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First Sunday of Advent

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the season leading up to Christmas, where we remember Christ’s first coming and look ahead with hope to His second coming.

As we were reading Scriptures and singing hymns for this first day of this Advent season in church today, I was overcome with the idea of death in Advent. Maybe that seems backwards to you. We tend to think of life and birth associated with Advent — the anticipation of life and birth, at least. Personally, I don’t think of death in Advent as naturally.

But why did Jesus come? He came to die.
Why did God give life to His Son? So He could experience death.
He came and lived in order to die in order to vanquish death.
He experienced life & death so that we may experience life eternal.
And how does that happen? By overcoming death.
The Advent season is the beginning of death. Advent leads to the vanquishing of Death.
Life happens so that death may happen so that true life may follow resurrection.

As death is so heavy on my heart and burdening my shoulders, it is comforting to see the theme of death in Advent in this way. To see that even Advent includes the theme of death. That Advent is not apart from death, but that death is somehow actually a part of Advent. They are connected. They are both part of God’s story.

From the Father forth He came
And returneth to the same,
Captive leading death and hell
High the song of triumph swell!

~from “Savior of the Nations, Come”

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory over the grave.

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

~from “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”

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Thankfulness & Contentment

People put lists of things they are thankful for all over the place. They put them on blogs and in emails (and I assume they are more than splattered all around the world of facebook). They share them with family members around the feasting table. I even saw someone at the store the other day with a list of “thankful for” items on a bookmark pinned to their uniform.

You know the typical things people include. We all hear about them. Over and over and over.
And that’s good.
It’s excellent, in fact.
Go, thankfulness.

I mean, we should be thankful for God, Christ, salvation, redemption, our families, our friends, our churches, our jobs, our homes, our clothing, our food, our toys, our gardens, our hobbies, our safety, our nation… You name it, we ought to be thankful for it. Right?

Okay. So how come nobody writes lists like this:

I am thankful for:
three more babies in heaven this year (which makes seven total)
seven handmade little wooden caskets that sit in the china hutch in our dining room
being pregnant six times in the last twenty months
thousands (& thousands) of dollars spent on medical treatments that didn’t save our baby’s life
empty, unused baby paraphernalia
unworn baby clothes
unworn maternity clothes
grief
crying six times a day
a womb that knows how to start the job but not complete it
specialists around the country who are desperate to work with me, but still haven’t found our answer

Anyway… if we are supposed to give thanks in all things (and yes, yes, we are…), then these things top my list (which nobody wants me to put on my blog, write in an email, or read out loud at the feasting table). But I don’t think I can honestly say “I am thankful for” any of these things. I can say the words. But that’s just about where it stops.

I am thankful for heaven.

Yes, I am. For a thousand reasons. Seven of them are redheaded reasons.

Our best friends are reading a book that I read a few years ago (The Rare Jewel Of Christian Contentment), and they shared this excerpt with us for Thanksgiving that I will now share with you:

[Contentment] is not opposed to making an orderly manner our moan and complaint to
God, and to our friends. Though a Christian ought to be quiet under God’s
correcting hand, he may without any breach of Christian contentment complain
to God. As one of the ancients says, Though not with a tumultuous clamor and
shrieking out in a confused passion, yet in a quiet, still, submissive way he may
unbosom his heart to God. Likewise he may communicate his sad condition to his
Christian friends, showing them how God has dealt with him, and how heavy the
affliction is upon him, that they may speak a word in season to his weary soul.
~Jeremiah Burroughs~

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Words fitly spoken

Proverbs 25:20

Whoever sings songs to a heavy heart
is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day,
and like vinegar on soda.

Matthew Henry’s concise commentary on this verse:
“We take a wrong course if we think to relieve those in sorrow by endeavouring to make them merry.“

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Blessed

Blessed is he whose faith is not offended,
When all around his way
The power of God is working out deliverance
For others day by day;

Though in some prison drear his own soul languish,
Till life itself be spent,
Yet still can trust his Father’s love and purpose,
And rest therein content.

Blessed is he, who through long years of suffering,
But off from active toil,
Still shares by prayer and praise the work of others,
And thus “divides the spoil.”

Blessed are thou, O child of God, who sufferest,
And canst not understand
The reason for thy pain, yet gladly leavest
Thy life in His blest hand.

Yea, blessed art thou whose faith is “not offended”
By trials unexplained,
By mysteries unsolved, past understanding,
Until the goal is gained.

~Freda Hanbury Allen~

Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me.
~Luke 7:23~

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Tangible Love

God is good to give us tangible love through His body while He holds our chins up above the rising waters:

  • flowers, including enough peruvian lilies to fill three vases ~ and the card wasn’t even signed! (although I have an inkling…)
  • the candlelight prayer vigil.
  • a gift bag from families at church, filled with edible goodies, kind notes, sweet candles, a cozy blanket, a gift card, Gideon Bibles placed in Hosanna’s honor, etc.
  • roses and palm branches (palm for Hosanna) arriving on our doorstep.
  • meals, because while I don’t even really feel like eating, we have to.
  • a book (again, I don’t even know who sent it) on suffering and pain in the Christian life.
  • cards, emails, messages ~ reminding us that the saints continue to uphold us in prayer.

Thank You, God for comforting us and for giving us people who are willing to be Your arms, Your feet, Your hands, Your shoulders. We need You. And we need Your people, Your body.

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Overwhelming Desire

I have this immense desire. For children.
It is overwhelming.
God gave it to me.
And He isn’t taking it away.

Oh, how I am praying for Him to fulfill it. To bring it to fruition.
My body aches and my heart throbs with the immensity of this desire.

Psalm 20:4-5

May He give you the desire of your heart
and make all your plans succeed.
May we shout for joy over your victory
and lift up our banners in the name of our God.

May the LORD grant all your requests.

Put my tears in Thy bottle, O Lord. Hear Thou my request. Bend low Thine ears, send Thy Spirit, provide by Thy spoken Word.
Do not disdain the godly desires of Thy handmaiden.
Be Thou near to me.

Oh, that I had the endurance of Job.

Job 6:8-13

Oh, that I might have my request,
that God would grant what I hope for,
that God would be willing to crush me,
to let loose His hand and cut off my life!
Then I would still have this consolation—
my joy in unrelenting pain—
that I had not denied the words of the Holy One.

What strength do I have, that I should still hope?
What prospects, that I should be patient?
Do I have the strength of stone?
Is my flesh bronze?
Do I have any power to help myself,
now that success has been driven from me?

And, oh, how I resonated with the words of David, as we sang this psalm yesterday in church – with a black veil covering my head and tears making tiny streams that flowed from eye to cheek to lip to chin to chest.

Psalm 22

My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
Why are You so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
My God, I cry out by day, but You do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest.

That is how I feel. It feels as though our God has forsaken us. It feels as though He does not hear our cries of deep & utter anguish. For two years now, day and night, we have beseeched His grace to provide us with a baby in our home. It seems He does not answer. He does not give us rest from our grief, our pain, the shadow of death is not lifted from our midst.

Yet You are enthroned as the Holy One;
You are the one Israel praises.
In You our ancestors put their trust;
they trusted and You delivered them.
To You they cried out and were saved;
in You they trusted and were not put to shame.

That little word, yet, is so powerful. Yet!! Looking to the past and to our covenantal ancestors, we see God’s faithfulness. We see His goodness. We see His saving graces. We see His provision. He heard them! He did not leave them! He rescued them!

But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
“He trusts in the LORD,” they say,
“let the LORD rescue him.
Let Him deliver him,
since he delights in Him.”

Although a large number of people throughout the world uphold us, sympathize with us, pray for us, grieve alongside us… there are still those who mock our faith, call us suckers, and ask me why we continue to trust the Lord when He calls us to walk this dark & dreary, soul-anguishing, hope-extinguishing path. While my flesh threatens to ask the same thing, yet (there’s that word again!) my heart is steadfast. By God’s grace, somehow, we are steadfast.

Yet You brought me out of the womb;
You made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
From birth I was cast on You;
from my mother’s womb You have been my God.

Yet. Again yet. We are covenant children. God has been our God since before we were even created. We belonged to God from the beginning. We have always been His. He has always been ours. We will always belong to one another. We have no choice – hallelujah!

Do not be far from me,
for trouble is near
and there is no one to help.

Trouble encases us. We look for help. Support. Encouragement. Answers. Treatments. And while our brothers & sisters do their absolute utmost to help us in those ways (praise the Lord! we are so thankful!), only our Heavenly Father can be the true trouble-solver and helper in all of this. We need Him near. Oh, how we need Him!

Many bulls surround me;
strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.
Roaring lions that tear their prey
open their mouths wide against me.
I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
it has melted within me.
My mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
You lay me in the dust of death.Dogs surround me,
a pack of villains encircles me;
they pierce my hands and my feet.
All my bones are on display;
people stare and gloat over me.
They divide my clothes among them
and cast lots for my garment.

Doctors, acquaintances, people online, even some people in closer circles to us than you might imagine… they scorn us and our situation. “Just adopt!” they say. “Get a surrogate and be done with this,” I have been told. “Stop grasping at straws and learn to accept your lot,” someone once said. I am stared at and gloated over. It adds to my grief and enhances my pain. The bulls and the dogs are Satan’s cohorts. They are sometimes people who spit at me with empty, thoughtless, even hurtful words. They are more often principalities that I can not see or touch, but who are mighty at work against the Gospel of Light in the world. These powers of darkness attack us every day, on every side. They seek our destruction.

But You, LORD, do not be far from me.
You are my strength; come quickly to help me.
Deliver me from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dogs.
Rescue me from the mouth of the lions;
save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

We beg our Father to be near to us. We ask Him to be our strength! We seek His help and deliverance! We are so bold as to tell Him to deliver us from the demons and evil powers that threaten to eat us alive.

I will declare Your name to my people;
in the assembly I will praise You.
You who fear the LORD, praise Him!
All you descendants of Jacob, honor Him!
Revere Him, all you descendants of Israel!
For He has not despised or scorned
the suffering of the afflicted one;
He has not hidden His face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.

We seek to praise the Lord even through the anguish we experience. We desire to proclaim His grace and mercy, even when it is hard to feel it. We honor Him and revere Him, and pray for our example to show forth the majesty of the Lord to His people & the watching nations so that they too will call upon His name. We trust that He has not ignored us or left us, in our suffering and affliction. We trust that He does not hide His face, but is listening. It is hard to believe right now… but we trust Him for it.

From You comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;
before those who fear You I will fulfill my vows.
The poor will eat and be satisfied;
those who seek the LORD will praise Him—
may your hearts live forever!

The Lord gives words to our empty lips. He gives us the strength to continue our fellowship with Him, when we feel too weakened to praise Him on our own. We ask Him to provide for our needs, and satisfy our broken souls.

All the ends of the earth
will remember and turn to the LORD,
and all the families of the nations
will bow down before Him,
for dominion belongs to the LORD
and He rules over the nations.
All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
all who go down to the dust will kneel before Him—
those who cannot keep themselves alive.
Posterity will serve Him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim His righteousness,
declaring to a people yet unborn:
He has done it!

The Lord will accomplish great things. His name will be exalted. He will be victorious. Over brokenness; over sin; over doubt; over pain; over grief; over mockery; over abandonment; over DEATH!! Amen! He will be praised, and our life of affliction will not be for naught! There will be a purpose proven over time. We will not have wasted our life in vain! If His righteousness is our aim, we will be successful!

But oh… how hard to feel that when our souls are in the midst of such indescribable anguish…

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Prayer Vigil

One of the great sacrifices of Christian love is prayer. Elisabeth Elliot said, “Prayer is irksome. We are reluctant to start and delighted to end.” This is true for so many Christians: what a tragedy. Martin Luther said, “The less I pray, the harder it gets. The more I pray, the better it goes.” Prayer is a sacrifice of great love and familial tenderness.

Our church is focusing love on us during this time of indescribable grief. One of the ways they are showing love to us is by having a prayer vigil in our yard tonight.

Psalm 141:2
Let my prayer be counted as incense before You,
and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!

From 7-8:30pm pacific standard time, our front yard will be specifically designated as a place for prayer. People will bring blankets and candles, and will pray silently with us & for us. They will pray for our grief; they will pray for my physical healing; they will pray that we will have victory over our medical problems; they will pray that we will be given children. Our hearts are warmed at the knowledge that our brothers and sisters in Christ want to uphold us before the Throne of Grace, want to designate a time & place to be with us in our mourning, and that they are even willing to do this in the rain/snow that chills to the bone. We are loved. We are upheld. We are mourned with. Hallelujah, what a blessing.

If you would like to pray with us tonight, please join our vigil beseeching the Lord’s mercy and grace upon our family. We humbly invite you to participate with us as the body of Christ, as we come to the Lord asking for bread.

Psalm 88:2
Let my prayer come before You;
incline Your ear to my cry!

We belong to God. We call upon Him to save us.
Even as Martin Luther repeatedly quoted Psalm 119:94, likewise we call out: “I am Yours! Save me!”

Elisabeth Elliot shares some thoughts on prayer:

Prayer is the opposite of leisure. It’s something to be engaged in, not indulged in. It’s a job you give first priority to, performing not when you have energy left for nothing else.
How can we change things by prayer? How “move” a sovereign and omnipotent God? We do not understand. We simply obey because it is a law of the universe, as we obey other laws of the universe, knowing only that this is how things have been arranged: the book falls to the floor in obedience to the law of gravity if I let go of it. Spiritual power is released through prayer.
One way of laying down our lives is by praying for somebody. In prayer I am saying, in effect, “my life for yours.” My time, my energy, my thought, my concern, my concentration, my faith–here they are, for you. So it is that I participate in the work of Christ. So it is that no work of faith, no labour of love, no smallest prayer is ever lost, but, like the smoke of the incense on the golden altar, rises from the hand of the angel before God.

As children of God, we must continually grow in our knowledge of & love for communion with Him through prayer. There are different types of prayer for different occasions. Public prayer. Private prayer. Long prayers. Short prayers. Prayers of blessing. Prayers of praise. Prayers of intercession. Prayers of desperation. Prayers for deliverance. Prayers of thankfulness. Prepared prayers. Prayers off-the-cuff. All kinds of prayer, but offered through faith and with a sincere heart, are necessary and even beautiful for the Christian life.

I love this article, highlighting John Calvin’s thoughts/beliefs on prayer.

Words fail to explain how necessary prayer is, and in how may ways the exercise of prayer is profitable. Surely with good reason the Heavenly Father affirms that the only stronghold of safety is calling upon His name. By so doing we invoke the presence both of His providence, through which He watches over and guards our affairs, and of His power, through which He sustains us, weak as we are and well-nigh overcome, and of His goodness, through which He receives us, miserably burdened with sins, unto grace: and, in short, it is by prayer that we call Him to reveal Himself as wholly present to us. Hence comes an extraordinary peace and repose to our consciences. For having disclosed to the Lord the necessity that was pressing upon us, we even rest fully in the thought that none of our ills is hid from Him who, we are convinced, has both the will and the power to take the best care of us.
~John Calvin, The institutes of the Christian Religion, Book III, Chapter 20, Part 2.

One thing that I think is perfectly simple yet incredibly profound, is the idea that we don’t pray because we are needy. We pray because we are commanded to do so. It is a grace to us that we are commanded to ask for provision when we are in need. How beautiful! Calvin, as is his custom, reads Scripture so very closely as to note that while prayer is God’s appointed means of meeting our needs, our needs are never the ground of prayer. Prayer is grounded in the command of God. Ultimately we are to pray not because we are ceaselessly needy, but rather because God’s command and claim are ceaselessly operative.

Today I pray one of Calvin’s own prayers, and seek to pray with sincerity and steadfastness:

Grant, Almighty God, that as Thou not only invitest us continually by the voice of Thy gospel to seek Thee, but also offerest to us Thy Son as our mediator, through whom an access to Thee is open, that we may find Thee a propitious Father; O grant, that relying on Thy kind invitation, we may through life exercise ourselves in prayer, and as so many evils disturb us on all sides and so many wants distress and oppress us, may we be led more earnestly to call on Thee, and in the meanwhile be never wearied in this exercise of prayer; until having been heard by Thee throughout life, we may at length be gathered to Thine eternal kingdom where we shall enjoy that salvation which Thou hast promised to us, and of which also Thou daily testifiest to us by Thy gospel, and be forever united to Thine only-begotten Son of whom we are now members, that we may be partakers of all the blessings which He has obtained for us by His death. Amen.

Scripture is such a gift to us for so many reasons, one of which is because it gives us countless prayers to offer back to our God, even (or especially) when we don’t know what to offer from our own lips. The book of psalms is the first place I go when I have no words of my own to pray. We must learn to pray back God’s Word to Him again. Martin Luther recommended Psalms 25, 67, 20, & 103 as well as the book of Titus as great springboards for praying Scripture to God.

And lastly, this is my favorite hymn on prayer, which I use today without melody simply as a spoken prayer:

Lord, teach us how to pray aright,
With reverence and with fear;
Though dust and ashes in Thy sight,
We may, we must draw near.

We perish if we cease from prayer;
O grant us power to pray;
And when to meet Thee we prepare,
Lord, meet us by the way.

God of all grace, we come to Thee
With broken, contrite hearts;
Give what Thine eye delights to see,
Truth in the inward parts.

Faith in the only sacrifice
That can for sin atone;
To cast our hopes, to fix our eyes,
On Christ, on Christ alone.

Patience to watch, and wait, and weep,
Though mercy long delay;
Courage our fainting souls to keep,
And trust Thee though Thou slay.

Give these, and then Thy will be done,
Thus, strengthened with all might,
We, through Thy Spirit and Thy Son,
Shall pray, and pray aright.

~James Montgomery, 1818~

Psalm 86:6
Give ear, O LORD, to my prayer;
listen to my plea for grace.

So with these thoughts and exhortations on prayer as a background, please join us tonight in our vigil, beseeching our Father’s grace.

Pray for us to pray rightly.
Pray for us to be humble.
Pray for us (including our extended family) to grieve in a way that befits sons of God.
Pray for Gabriel as he asks questions, sees tears, and deals with grief in his own little ways.
Pray for my body to heal.
Pray for our miscarriages to cease.
Pray for us to have wisdom with upcoming medical decisions.
Pray for God to fill our home with children.
Pray for the Lord not to tarry in pouring blessings upon our heads.
Pray for us to patiently wait for Him and upon Him.
Pray for the body of Christ to be blessed even as they seek to bless us.
Pray for us to be gracious recipients of these blessings & graces.
Pray for our neighbors to see the prayer vigil tonight & have their hearts softened by God Almighty.

May the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen. (Numbers 6:24-25)