Godly Passion

This last year of politics left me feeling a host of unpleasant emotions. Some were caused by the fake news presented as truth and the frustration of trying to discern what was real and what wasn't. Some of the emotions were due to the polarization of the political parties, which in itself could be an awesome system of checks and balances if people listened to one another and wanted what is best for all. Some of them were due to the manipulation tactics used by people to sway voters. Many believed the loudest voice, the crudest words, the most hateful labels, and the most unrelenting gas lighting techniques could create enough fear, obligation, and guilt to sway people to vote for their candidate--qualified or not. Some of it was due to the demonizing of the main players in the political arena. If you believe one side, you believe President Trump is a demon possessed man incapable of doing any good and if you believe the other side, you believe both Obama and Hillary were Satan's cohorts doing his bidding. But when we take off the blinders of misplaced passion we see they are humans who each have both weaknesses and strengths. They are people who have accomplished some good and who have made some serious mistakes and made some poor, sinful choices, just like you and just like me.

Now that the election is over and the new president has taken office, I've been trying to decide how to respond in a godly way to the government we have in place. To be honest, as a survivor, Trump's moral character and objectification of women grieved my heart as did the nation's and the churches varied responses to it. As much as I was bothered by the information that came out during the elections on both sides I realize President Trump is not the worst of the worst and neither was Obama and Hillary. Just think about Pharaoh--he was known for his enslavement and mistreatment of the Jewish nation and the murder of innocent babes. Nebuchadnezzar--he took captive many of Israel's finest young men and attempted to turn their hearts from their God and their homes and to use them for his own purposes. Herod--he was an infamous murderer who ordered the killing of all male children under the age of two in an attempt to thwart the life of Christ, the promised Messiah. Then there was Nero who was known for slaughtering Christians in an attempt to thwart the spread of Christianity and the worship of the King of kings. And then there was Hitler--he attempted to destroy the Jews, encamping, starving, experimenting on, and the mass murdering of Jews and those who gave them refuge.

Because Christ's Kingdom, the church, is not a visible kingdom, I know this world and even this country, as much as I love it, is not my true home. My loyalty and my deepest affections are to lie with Christ and His heavenly Kingdom. In fact, all the hate and the accusations being spewed back and forth have made me long for His return and made me a bit homesick for Home. In a perfect world, we would live in a Theocracy under the rule of a perfect, benevolent King. But that is not the case right now. But, as long as I have breath I am Christ's ambassador, representing Him as I navigate this life in this world. My allegiance, like any other ambassador, lies with the King and the living out of His word as I represent Him here in this world.

To do this and to remain in joy, I realized I need to change my expectations. President Trump isn't the Savior and if I expect him and the ruling party to fully embrace Christian thinking and Christian values, I will live in a constant state of disappointment and dissatisfaction. And I have been afraid that people demanding ruling parties do so don't realize there is danger in demanding that. I was relieved that John Piper expressed that danger, "The linking of the Christian church with the ruling political regimes has more often proven to corrupt the essential spirit of Christ." I think he is right on.

So the question, I wrestle with is, "How do I passionately live this life of ambassadorship?

First, I need to keep in mind my heavenly citizenship and the King I represent. Because of this, I can follow what He has laid out in His word. He has promised that any suffering and discomfort in this present time including suffering under worldly leadership is minute compared to the glory I will experience when I go home. For now I just want to represent Him well and if suffering is a part of that, I want to suffer well so that my life would continue to draw people to Him.

Second, I can pray for the government, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal to officials what righteousness truly looks like and convict them of sin and wrong doing and their need for a Savior. I can pray that God would cause them to be sensitive to His leading and that He would fill them with humility, patience, and godly wisdom. At the same time, I can hold on to the truth of God's Word and remember God's providence has always ruled and continues to rule over the ungodly kings of this earth. He has and still can use even the most rebellious rulers to fulfill His purposes. He sets them up, He takes them down, and He turns them around. Their hearts are like flowing waters in His hands. I can rest in the fact that God is always good and that ungodly leaders who believe they are in control cannot ever negate His goodness and His sovereignty.

Third, regardless of the person(s) in office, I can demonstrate godly respect towards the positions they bear and obedience to Christ at the same time. I can maintain values consistent with my faith just as Joseph did when He was sold into slavery by his brothers. I can remain faithful to God, always keeping in mind that my identity is in Christ and humbly and assertively relate to those over me just as Daniel, Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego did while living captive in Persia.

Fourth, I can choose to remember my true calling is to worship God and to love others well no matter what is going on around me. I can pray and look for opportunities to serve, support, and witness to people from every economic class, every ethnic people group, and every educational background because I know with out a doubt that it is God's will that His church be a beautiful blend of diverse people united by a common faith in an awe inspiring God. It is His desire we love each other well and keep ourselves unstained by the corruption is in this world. I can choose to walk in the joy that comes from knowing Him and having the greatest message to share.

Fifth, though President Trump's character leaves something to be desired, I refuse to worry and to complain about every nuance of His presidency. I refuse to look at him as either all good or all bad. I refuse to buy into the lie that I am powerless over the next 4-8 years because I find both love and prayer to be empowering. I refuse to buy into the passion turned hate of so many that tends to drain the soul of energy. I prefer to have His passion--the life-giving passion that drove Christ to sacrifice His life for me--be the passion that fills and energizes the soul. I prefer to have His passion driving me to my knees, driving me to share the gospel, driving me to love well, and driving me to to serve the wounded women God brings our way so that their stories can be redeemed and they can walk in godly passion, loving well, experiencing unexplainable, uncontainable, and unimaginable joy that comes from trusting in a merciful, gracious God.

This Thing We Call Joy

"Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,

who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,

despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."

Hebrews 12:2 

I 've had a few friends that are what call joyful souls. I envy them a bit because they wake up happy and remain that way most of the day. If something uncomfortable or hurtful  happens, they seem to recover quickly and return to joy with out much ado. Their thoughts are usually on the positive side. But this girl isn't like them. I wake up so slowly that when I first got married, my husband often asked me if I was upset about something. Over the years I learned to wake up earlier than everyone so I could have coffee, spend time with the Lord, and go for a walk so I was capable of smiling and conversing when my family woke up. 

Several years ago I realized every winter I was finding it harder and harder to get up and was experiencing less and less joy. Eventually I was diagnosed with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). The treatment is to simply sit in front of a full spectrum light for a period of time each day during the winter months. I hadn't realized how much the light  helps until my light burned out. Before I knew it, I was feeling gloomy and struggling  with negative thoughts that kept running through my head. It took so much work to find joy. I knew the light would help so I ordered another one and took steps to manage my mood as I waited for it to arrive. I chose to quit shaming myself for the struggle and embraced the way God made me, even though it included a brain needing extra light to function normally. I chose to rest adequately, eat healthier, and counter negative thoughts with the truth. In essence, I chose to be kind and gracious with myself. When the light arrived and my mood lightened, I realized how hard I had to work to find joy. My time without the light reminded me that depression isn't just the  experience of sadness or grief or having a "bad" day. It is a change in brain chemistry that impacts emotions, energy level, and thought processes, making it difficult to find joy in one's every day life.   

Because I experienced SAD this year, I found myself pondering this thing we call joy. Joy is defined as great happiness and pleasure, especially of a spiritual kind. I looked up some verses that speak of joy. Many of the verses were in relationship to military victories that Israel had over other nations. They were so joyful that people wrote songs to commemorate battles won and they sang as they danced in celebration, praising God for the victories He gave.

King David spoke of joy in the Psalms in relationship to knowing God and the knowledge that He is in control even during difficult seasons of life. When he poured out his heart to God, He spoke of joy of abiding in God, resting beneath His wings, knowing His word, and being blessed by Him. He spoke of the joy that comes in the morning during hard times.

Not all joy was centered around exciting things like winning battles. Hebrews 10:34  says  Hebrew believers found joy even when their property was plundered because they knew they have a better possession stored up for them. Even James tells us to count it all joy when we face various trials. Maybe James gave this advice because he understood people would be able to understand the love and sacrifice of Jesus through suffering they endured. Maybe he knew they would be able to see God work in and though them as they navigated difficult times and believe me the early church went through all sorts of growing pains, persecution and hardship. He may have also known that treasures are found in faithfully navigating the hard--treasures like special knowledge of God and His plans, a deeper understanding of spiritual matters, and a deeper intimacy that results when people walk with Him through difficult, painful times.

The verse that has helped me the most over the years when I have needed to fight for joy is the verse at the top of the blog. Jesus was even able to find joy when He was facing the end of His life. That sounds simplistic and like one of those religious platitudes we all hate having thrown at us when we are suffering. But, if we think of all that He faced during His final days it isn't simplistic at all. He was rejected and hated by the religious leaders of His day. He was often misunderstood by the crowds and when He went to the Garden to pray, He took three of the disciples that He was closest to. Even after telling them He felt so much sorrow He felt like dying they kept falling asleep as He prayed. I can't imagine feeling any more alone than that. The Bible also tells us Jesus experienced so much anguish that His sweat was tinged with blood. Then when He was arrested, it was based on false charges as he was betrayed and deserted by his disciples. The trials he endured in the middle of the night were illegal and not based on truth. The crowds he had preached to chanted for His death, He was beaten, disrobed, and crowned with a crown made of thorns and cruelly nailed to a cross. As God, He knew what He was facing. Yet, we are told for the joy set before Him He chose to lay down His life for us. I am sure that He found joy in being obedient to God and to be once again at the right hand of His Father. But I also think that a part of the joy He saw before Him was the joy of presenting His bride--the church--to His Father. He purchased us out of the slave market of sin with His own blood and in doing so He reconciled us to God by faith.

So, what can we learn from all of this? First, when their is a spiritual victory, we should celebrate big! We can sing songs welling up with in our hearts and dance like nobody is looking as we praise God for His goodness. I remember one youth pastor that literally ran out of a room full of students and did cartwheels and summersaults and shouted for joy because some of the students accepted Christ. I can't help but think we should all respond in the same way when someone comes to know Jesus and is translated from the Kingdom of Darkness in to God's glorious Kingdom of Light, is baptized to show their commitment to follow Him, resists a besetting sin, is emotionally healed, answers the calling God has made on their his life, or when someone gives testimony to the activity of God in their lives.

Second, we can choose to live with an eternal perspective like those who joyfully accepted the news their land had been plundered. Not getting a dream home pales when we think of the place that Jesus, Himself, is preparing for us. The fickle human love doesn't bother us so much when we keep in mind the deep, sacrificial love of God. The sorrow we face in this life doesn't compare to the joy we will face when we at last see Jesus. Our perspective during tough  times is drastically changed when we remember this world--this life isn't all there is. We have eternity to look forward to--eternity where love never fails and where there is no more sorrow, no more death, no more illness, no more sin, and no more pain.

Finally, there seems to be a lasting joy that comes from obeying God when it is difficult to do. Others may criticize us, dislike us, and persecute us, but if we know we've obeyed Him in the hard and have suffered well, we are graced with His joy--a joy that is not the fleeting joy that comes with happy circumstances, but a long lasting joy, knowing we have honored and glorified our King. That is a joy no one can steal. This thing we call joy is our gift to claim and at times may have to fight to keep, but it will always be found when living with an eye on eternity.    

I am the Lame Begger

Sometimes when I am in church, I am blessed with two sermons at one time. One is  the  sermon  being given by the pastor and the other is the sermon the Lord presses on my heart. Last Sunday I had one of those experiences as one of our pastors was teaching through Acts 3:1-10.* My mind was completely engaged in the sermon and I was feeling excited as I heard the concepts Pastor Brent shared. His sermon in a nut shell was, "God interrupts the usual with the unusual to do the undeniable."

This Biblical account is centered around a man who had been born lame. Because of this defect, he was not allowed to worship in the temple and would have been ostracized by his  community because people believed birth defects, illnesses, or other afflictions were often a result of a person or his family's sin. He was unable to work and his needs were provided when people took mercy on him and carried him to the Beautiful Gate of the Temple so he could beg. Daily he sat.  begging  those who came to the temple to pray at the same time every day. The disciples came to pray as was their custom. And the man sat there day after day begging and begging...so used to people walking by that he no longer looked up as he begged. 

However, this day was different. The disciples stopped and Peter looked down at the man and asked him to look at them. The man looked up and they told him they had no money to give him, but would give him what they did had. Then Peter said, "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!" He then took the lame beggar by the hands and raised him up. The man didn't just stumble up stiffly like someone who had not used his legs in a long time. He leapt up as his legs became strong. He took a few steps but his joy was so great that he couldn't contain it. He started leaping and praising God as he entered the temple for the first time ever to worship his God.

I love this man's response! I love his joy. I love it that God worked through the disciples to make this man whole. As I read through the gospels and Acts, I often find myself asking the same questions  Pastor Brent posed in his sermon, "Why him?" "Why here?" and "Why now?"

God may have chosen this man because He knew the man would rise up and praise Him unashamedly and many people would see the undeniable power of God and be drawn to the Savior. Maybe God wanted people to see the joy and praise that flowed out of the relationship that healed. Maybe when Christ had been by there before, the man's heart wasn't ready to receive healing or Him, but now he was. Or maybe it was just God's will for it to occur on this day, at this time, to this man.

During the sermon I was pondering the fact that Jesus didn't heal every person and was wondering why He chose who He chose. That is when the second sermon began to unfold in my mind. Every person Jesus touched is someone I can relate to and this time it was no different. Maybe, God chose to heal the lame beggar to show me and possibly you that we are all lame beggars.

We were all born spiritually dead and as a result were defective in the sense that the part of us that was to connect our hearts to the heart of God was unable to do its job, just as the man's legs couldn't do their job. In and of our selves we aren't good enough to enter the family of God and we needed Jesus to give us a way in, just as the beggar needed someone to make him whole so he could enter the Temple. So often, we feel defective as a result of our sin or the sin that was inflicted upon us by others and it is God who can free us from that feeling. 

We are also like the lame beggar, crying out for what we think we need, when what we really need is more understanding of Jesus. So many of us spend years asking God for things and we are asking amiss either because we don't recognize our true needs or we don't realize how big our God is.

We ask Him to make people love us, not realizing we already  possess a love so rich it fills the deepest holes in our hearts so we can become more about giving love than receiving it.

We ask Him for acceptance, not realizing He has taken us out of the Kingdom of Darkness and accepted us into His Kingdom of Light and we are now called  His chosen ones. We honestly can't be anymore accepted than that! All we have to do to feel accepted is to embrace the truth.

We ask for healing from addictions, eating disorders, and emotional pain, thinking if we could be set free that we could be close to God. But the truth is that by leaning in to Jesus and being close to Him we live out victory through His power being displayed through our weaknesses.

We ask for wisdom, not realizing that by having Jesus, we have been given the mind of Christ and we can tap into His wisdom by spending time with Him in His Word.

We ask God to free us from the crippling shame with which we are plagued, not realizing the way out of shame is bringing the shameful things to Jesus's light.

When we ask God for something, what we are often really needing is to draw near to Jesus and allow Him into the hidden parts of our lives so that our relationship with Him grows deeper, more powerful, and more satisfying. As believers, we have a God who takes the crippled and makes them whole. We have a God who can show us our true needs. We have a God who can help the unbelief that keeps us from seeing all that we already possess. Oh, that we would never ever forget that we have a  powerful God with a great big heart whose resources are infinitely enough to meet our every need. Oh, if we only believed the truth, then we would be filled with the same uncontainable joy the lame beggar had. After all, aren't we are all just different versions of him?

*This sermon can be heard by going to http://www.riverlakeschurch.org/index.php/watch-and-listen/sermons/the-lame-beggar-healed

That Our Joy Might be Full

"These things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you, 
and that your joy might be full. "

John 15:12

As a young adult, I was so afraid of God's sovereignty that I literally robbed myself of the joy that I now believe He wanted me to experience. I remember wondering things like: “What if He wants me to be single?” “What if He wants me to be a missionary to Africa?” “What if He wants me to marry someone who liked to move a lot?” “What if He wants me to have two children when I want six?” I came across the above verse a few years ago and I have been intrigued by it ever since.

Christ told the parable of the Vine and the Branches to His disciples and in that parable He says He wanted them to stay plugged into the vine so His joy would fill His disciples until it overflowed. It was a shock for me to realize Christ wanted His joy to fill us! That means that no matter what we go through in life, He wants His joy to remain in us and for that joy to sustain us through the difficult things we experience. I don’t know about you, but for me, “joy being full” doesn’t sound like a thread of joy to barely hang on to.

As a young adult, I had the perspective that if I was faced with something hard I must be doing something wrong or that maybe God was angry with me. Sometimes I think I even bordered on believing God did not love me as much as He did others. That faulty belief system meant whenever I experienced emotional pain I had to do something to become a better person to get the pain to stop. That mindset left me pretty worn out. Verse two of Chapter 15 says it is when God sees fruit in our lives that He begins to prune us so we can produce even more fruit. That means when He sees us begin producing godly characteristics like love, peace, self-control, righteousness or sharing Christ that He will begin to refine us even more so we might produce even more fruit.Could it be that the trials and temptations we face that are not of our own choosing are not a punishment, but a pruning? They are a loving and intentional method God uses to transform us. God continues to prune us of the things that hinder our potential to produce the quantity and quality of the fruit He desires us to produce.

It is His desire for us to love with His love not a worldly love. That means He may bring a series of people into our lives that challenge us and that we will have to work at loving them as He does. If He wants to produce the peace that passes understanding in us, He may have to put us in situations that require facing fears so we can experience His peace in circumstances that don't warrant peace. If He wants to produce kindness in us, He will more than likely bring people to whom we will have to work hard at showing His kindness so it becomes more natural for us to do so.

He also points out in the parable that the way we have joy is to remain in Him. This means we are to be dependent on Him. Just as sap flows freely from the vine into the branches feeding and making the branch healthy and productive, the Holy Spirit fills us, enabling us to produce godly character. Apart from Him, we cannot live the Christian life and produce godly fruit He desires us to produce. Apart from Him, we cannot forgive from the heart, we cannot love the unlovable, or overcome the weaknesses of our flesh. To live for Christ requires supernatural power that can only come from being in a right relationship with Him. It also requires we do what we can to have our minds filled with His thoughts and surrendering our will so that it will conformed to His will. As He works in our hearts and lives through us, it will be reflected in the way we act, think, react, and talk and it will impact our relationship with Him and with everyone with whom we come in contact.

In closing, Christ's goal for us is to glorify our Heavenly Father by bearing much fruit. When we fulfill that goal the outcome is always joy! As God prunes and as we become more like Him, we will experience joy to the fullest. When vines are being pruned, they cut off all the little tiny twigs that sap all the nutrients away from the fruit, not the big branches needed to bear fruit. The question each of us should ask ourselves is, “What are the fruitless twigs in our lives?” Could they be our business? Could they be the misconceptions we have of God? Could they be unhealed hurts? Could they be unbelief, fear, bitterness, unhealthy friendships, enemies, stress, addictions, worldly desires or worldly viewpoints? If none of these touched a vein in us, we can ask ourselves what stands between us and God or what takes our energy and our focus away from Him. If we can relate to things on the list, we don't need to "beat ourselves" up. It is more beneficial to be curious and to accept our humanity. That we can see them and identify them is proof God is at working in us. We will spend the rest of our lives trying to balance jobs, family, and friends. We will spend the rest of our lives learning about God and still not have internalized it all. We will spend the rest of our lives learning how much the Lord loves us and delights in us and the rest of our lives laying our hurts, our doubts, our concerns, and our fears at His feet. We will spend the rest of our lives learning to love friends and enemies. If we have a weakness in the flesh or an addiction we will spend a lifetime walking closely to Christ to have victory. We will spend a lifetime studying His word and letting it give us discernment about the world. The question that needs to be asked is, are we willing to persevere that we might be more fruitful in order to find our joy?

Prayer: Father, thank you for providing a way out of our sin. Thank you that Christ's desire was for us to experience His joy to its fullest. Help us to trust the pruning process and help us to grow in obedience so that we might produce more fruit and be filled with Your joy. We praise you for You are good, You are Holy, and You are perfect in all of Your ways! Help each one of us to abide fully in you. Amen.

Outrageous Love

"He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her sheerer is silent, so He did not open His mouth."
Isaiah 53:7

If there were ever a man who deserved to live a life filled with joy, it would have been Jesus. He deserved to be clothed in royal robes, crowned with a golden crown, and handed a scepter. He deserved to be honored and respected. His character was marked by a righteousness no other man has ever achieved. Miracles, forgiveness, teaching, and healing that transcended from the physical realm to the emotional and spiritual realms characterized His ministry. He exhibited power and authority over nature, illness, death, and demons that taunted men's souls. More importantly a sacrificial unconditional love was the motivation for every act He performed and for every word He spoke. To begin to understand the depths of Christ's outrageous love we have to look past the life He lived to the death He died. It was in His life that He set aside His right to live eternally to experience our sin. It was in the death he died that His love poured out. He set aside His glory to bear the burden of all of our ugly sin. He chose to set aside His relationship with His Father to feel our deepest pain—separation from the Heavenly Father.

During His life, Christ expressed His love through teaching, confrontations, miracles. transparent relationships, and continuous prayer. He also chose to express His love another way. As He was arrested, tried, beaten, and crucified, He chose to love through a determined silence that spoke as loudly as the words He preached and as loudly as the actions he demonstrated. To prove His love to us, the same mouth that spoke the universe into being remained silent in the face of accusations. The same mouth that calmed angry seas remained silent as crowds mocked Him. The same voice that preached to crowds was silent during illegal trials. It was silent when the earth darkened and as sin was poured out on Him. The same voice that called a dead man out of  the tomb refused to answer false accusations hurled, refused to call down angels to help Him. The same voice that caused soldiers to fall back when they arrested Him was silent as He endured brutal beatings. 

He was God. He was innocent. He was sinless. He had every right to defend Himself and He had the power to walk away from the hate and the sin—yet He chose to remain silent, sentencing Himself to die. He even remained silent when soldiers took whips with sharp stones and bits of bones embedded in the end and beat Him, ripping His flesh wide open. He was silent when they put a scarlet robe on His bleeding flesh and jammed a crown of thorns onto His head. So enraged by the perfect life He lived, they slapped Him and pulled hairs out of His beard, hurling curses and spit at Him. They even drew lots to see who would get His clothes. He was silent as they placed His hands on the cross bar and hammered nails through His hands and His feet. With each clang of the hammer, the searing pain of the nails tearing through flesh and bones, emphasized His silence, As they picked up the cross and dropped it into the ground He faced faces filled with hate. He remained silent when the searing pain of nails intensified with each breath He took. He remained silent when His bloody, raw back rubbed against the wood grain. He remained silent as the thorns dug in His brow and the blood trickled down. 

Hanging suspended between heaven and earth every breath increased the pain, He did we could never have done. He looked at the people below him and broke His silence to ask His Father to forgive them. As our sin was placed on Him, a cold darkness blanketed the earth. Christ was thrust into another realm of pain He had never before experienced – it was the emotional pain you and I feel when we are bound by sin--He felt the same loneliness we feel when we walk away from God in guilt. He felt the same hopelessness and despair we feel when we no longer go to our Father to have needs met. He felt the same sense of being forsaken as we feel when we are buried beneath a mountain of shame. Jesus, alone for the first time in all eternity, was separated from His heavenly Father. Then and only then He broke His silence. It was not a cry for His release, but a heart-rending cry that rose up from the deepest parts of His soul. "My God, My God why have You forsaken me?" With a heart broken by separation, He died our death.

By looking at His death, we get glimpses of the depth of His love and we see the high cost of grace. He loved enough to die for fearful disciples who ran when He was arrested, to die for Peter who vehemently denied knowing Him, to die for those who arrested Him, for those who beat Him, for those who mocked Him, for those who hammered the nails. He even loved deeply enough to stay on the cross when sin made Him feel alone and forsaken. His outrageous love was enough to endure the cruelty of the cross for the joy of presenting us to His Father—not as sinners, but as beloved children, purchased and purified by His blood. He loved with a love so outrageous it killed Him. I want to remember that when I face trials and God seems silent. His silence has been one of the loudest declarations of His love we will ever hear. He has chosen to be a peculiar person, a priest, and an adopted child. He has promised to never leave me or forsake me. So, when He chooses to speak to me through His silence again, I want to hear what He is saying?

Prayer: Father, thank you for the love that Christ demonstrated to us in His suffering and His death. We also thank you for your forgiveness. Please help us love those who are difficult to love. May our commitments of love not be here today and gone tomorrow -- but be firm and steadfast through every circumstance imaginable. May we always experience Your love at it deepest levels when You seem to be silent. AMEN.