Until the Day Breaks

Pouring rain and a cloudy afternoon in the quiet of naptime’s hush. Ahhhhh. Jesus loves to slow us down with the weather and somehow my heart always is surprised to find a lifting of a certain pressure whenever the clouds roll in and the rain begins. I’ve always loved the rain. When I was little I remember I saved up $7 to buy my first umbrella. I couldn’t imagine a more worthy purchase. And then I would wait…sunny day after sunny day…waiting for the rain. Across the street from my house was an empty lot that just so happened to overlook the little town I lived in (very little actually—who’s ever heard of Moscow, Idaho?). When the rain would finally come I would take my little umbrella and go stand overlooking the town for as long as possible. To me, there was nothing like the “quiet” of pounding rain upon my umbrella, drowning out every other sound and surrounding me with solitude on every side. I think I still feel that way. I love the sound of rain and the silence it demands by its musical and restful rhythm. I love the slowness it insists upon in its dripping and shadowy skies. It makes me feel a sense of solitude and a sense of being surrounded by the Sender all at the same time—alone with Alone says it well.

That’s where I am today, in the center of that solitude…breathing and drinking deeply as my Jesus surrounds me with His love on every side. Oh how I love Him…and how He loves me…even in the sending of the rain.

From my book Entirety on Personalizing God’s Pursuit in Creation:

I’ll never forget when I first believed that God was actually pursuing my heart with the mission of love in a personal manner through His created order. It happened for the first time with a flower…actually several of them. Over ten years ago now, it’s like yesterday in my memory. In those days, I lived with several girls in a duplex in a not-so-great part of town. Affordable? Yes. Safe? Well, let’s just say that we were all glad to graduate from those times. Behind this duplex was what I called “my field.” It was where I went to pray and be with God. In truth, it was an overgrown lot, a mess of weeds so thick that there was little draw for anyone to walk through it. Thus, it was mine, all mine. And in all of my trampings through my field, I never saw anyone else back there, only ever confirming to me that this was the place where God waited for me, the place He wanted to meet me.

It was one very hot day, as were most of the days spent in that field. I was pacing in prayer back and forth, up and down, sometimes with words, sometimes with a little song, sometimes with silence. I remember I wanted to make an actual visible path through those weeds that I could call my own, and so on this day, being not the first of the path-plowing endeavor, back and forth I walked in my trail, up and down in the same straight line, over and over and over and over again. This day was also like most others spent in this way in that there was not a lot happening in my prayer time in the perceivable realm. I didn’t feel much movement in the Word. I wasn’t hearing anything from the Lord. My heart seemed to be a bit stuck, not moving in tenderness or any distinguishable breakthrough. A bit discouraged, yet sure of God’s desire to be found by me, I kept pacing and praying, praying and pacing, back and forth, over and over, eyes to the ground, as the weeds beneath my feet slowly came into submission, and my path became ever so faintly discernable.

It was on one particular stride down the path when I was suddenly struck by something. There alongside my ever-so-faint footpath were a small group of wildflowers, lifting their heads up to greet me. And then and there I was struck by a possibility. My mind started reasoning. Why are these flowers here, right alongside this path of mine? Who knows about this path except me…and the Lord? Who is here to enjoy these flowers except me? Has there ever been anyone else back in this overgrown lot except me? Then would it be so far-fetched to assume, that these flowers are in fact planted right here along my path for none other than I?? In all the silence, am I imagining God might have wanted to voice His love to me this day through these flowers, right here along my path? Hmmmm…And the reasoning went on as my ever-so-small faith sought to sprout from its seed form, fighting against my “better judgment” that I was being childish and seeking to overcome my skepticism that Love could actually be made manifest in such a way.

I’m not sure I fully believed those flowers were for me that day, but something faint changed in me, and my eyes have never been the same. Though I might have begun with mostly skepticism fighting against a tiny bit of faith, as the days went on, the percentages soon changed, and faith and love began to win. Soon I began to see new flowers that were not there the day before, and I was certain of why they were there on these later days. And it wasn’t just the flowers. The rain became a signature telling of God’s love for me. Every time it rained, no matter what I was doing, I became arrested by God’s tender love that He wanted to voice to me. In fact, I was such a believer in this divine-rain-giving that my roommate at the time used to say, “Every time it rains I just think, ‘Wow. God sure does love Dana.’”

In those days one of my big events of the evening was to get in my car right before nightfall and rush up to the top of my favorite hill to watch the sunset. The whole event was all for me. And God’s love was so loud through it, so real, so near. I used to watch all of the cars driving on the highway far below and wonder if anyone else in the near vicinity was catching this, if anyone else was claiming what was so readily being offered. And near nightfall, I would watch, as in extreme unnecessary proficiency, God painted the sky with a blaze of color and light, just for me. As the heavens declared the glory of God once more in the descending of the sun, I took my place as one receiving this personal expression of God’s love—a testimony of His nearness unto me (Ps. 19:1–6).

 from Deep unto Deep 
“…I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. Return to the stronghold, you prisoners of hope. Even today I declare that I will restore double to you” (Zechariah 9:11-12).
Seasons of divine silence are the prison sentences that He gives us to pass through while in the boundaries of time. They are noiseless times of stillness that God brings us through not for punishment but for refinement of our faith, hope and love. He imprisons us within “waterless pits.” These are the kind of depths that keep the prisoner deep in their yawn, yet still with the hope of deliverance. They are too dry to drown us and yet too deep to easily escape. Though God gives them permission to hold us for a time, they are not allowed to kill us, and this hope of deliverance keeps us alive throughout the duration of our sentence. We are alive and well even in the deep of this designated darkness. The Lord’s message to us in these times is that He Himself will set us free from the waterless pit in His perfect timing. He calls us a “prisoner of hope” as we wait for Him, because our one hope within this cell is anchored in Him: that He would come and show Himself as our Deliverer.
One of the scariest things about these prisons is that only one Person knows where we are. We are tied up and helpless in the depth of a pit, and only one Man knows our exact location. Though we may try a thousand times, we cannot explain its darkness to others. Though we yearn to leave our loneliness, no man is aloud to find us here and deliver us. There are no visiting hours. We’re not allowed the comfort of company in these prisons, for they are reserved for God and soul. Though we try to let others in, most always, our prison walls keep us from the ability to bring them in through words or descriptions. Though we cry out, our voice is quickly swallowed by the silencing shadows. Only one Man knows where we are. One Person has led us here, and He alone can free us once again. He alone knows the pit in which we are held captive, and His voice alone will break open the doorway of freedom. Salvation belongs to the Lord (Psalm 3:8), and He is jealous to be the One who deliverers it to our door.
Our comfort in these times rests solely in our knowledge of God’s heart. Yes, He is the only One who knows our whereabouts, yet He Himself is also the supreme Deliverer of all time, and surely He will come and deliver His chosen one. He will not leave us here. He will come for us. All of His ways are love, and therefore, we are confident that He has not brought us here for punishment or neglect but only for greater love. When the Lord gives the invitation of suffering and endurance, the end intended by Him is that we would enter into the depths of His compassion and mercy (James 5:10-11).We have asked Him to deepen our love and take us into the fullness of all He would give the human heart, and these prison sentences are part of His answer. They are God’s agents to produce the love and agreement that we ourselves have longed for. He will surely deliver us the very moment Love’s longsuffering has had its full way within us. The only One who knows our whereabouts will not leave us nor forsake us. He will come, just like He promised. He will answer our hope with deliverance.
“…But hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance” (Romans 8:24-25).
We hope in what we cannot see, and our faith is the proof that what is unseen is truly real. The hope within us is Christ in us, our hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). It is an ever-abiding reality, anchoring our soul to eternity. We would be like waves tossed to and fro by the sea, if we were not forever fastened to the God unseen.
Jesus has brought Himself to the low place of earth by setting eternity in the hearts of men, and He has brought weak human beings such as ourselves to the highest place by making a way for us to be seated with Him in heavenly places. The One who is our Mediator, who ascended before us, passed through the heavens and took His seat at the right hand of the Father. Fully God. Fully Man. He is the Lamb in the midst of the throne (Revelation 5:6). Who can fathom the possibility that the One who is seated upon the throne is one like us, a MAN? And yet, He is also the God of the whole earth. He is the God-Man Jesus Christ. He is the One who is ever interceding for us and bringing us forth in this journey of wholehearted love. After His ascension, when He took His place at the right hand of the Father, He sent forth His Holy Spirit to dwell within us.
We are prisoners of hope. In this prison, we are kept alive because of a living hope. Everyday we search our horizon for any sign of the Beloved. Yes, there are days when that hope wears bright eyes and a smile, but most days it wears a gnawing ache and many tears. Still, it always keeps our hearts alive—ever rattling at the door, ever crying out for deliverance. Hope is our companion. Hope is our friend. Hope is what keeps our hearts alive.          

From my new book Entirety…       In the midst of the Christmas season, let us meditate on the greatness of Jesus’ full-givenness in love for us … We know and think of Jesus from our first sight of Him, a helpless Baby lain in a manger in an environment so primitive and crude. We recall the stories of His youth, how He taught in the synagogue and how He grew in wisdom and favor with God and man (Lk. 2:52). We know Him later in His ministry to the masses, His teachings and His healings, His words of profound authority and weight, His compassion and demonstrations of love unparalleled—ultimately culminating in a cross of utter self-giving, the supreme symbol of love, the image of the greatest offering ever given.
When we think of Jesus, we begin with these images and these conceptions, for this is how He first revealed Himself to us. Yet there is more to His story than the frail beginnings of Bethlehem, and unless we push back that curtain to the scenes before the shepherds and kings to that which preceded the angelic host on Bethlehem’s hillside, we will not know the unutterable greatness and scandalous entrance of this One who gave Himself unto those who were once His enemies—the One who laid down His life, His all, not just in part but in entirety. Jesus, the Living Word, was God from eternity, begotten before time, dwelling in the unapproachable light with the Father, inhabiting the everlasting ages before the world was made in all glory and majesty (Jn. 1:1–2). Perpetually worshipped by angels, He possessed all things from all eternity, and to any onlooker of the adoring heavenly hosts, there was no apparent reason for this to change.
Yet in the heart of God, from this love of the Holy Three, there was a plan of scandalous proportions rooted in outrageous love, and the crux of that plan involved the unthinkable departing of the Begotten Son from the shrouds of unapproachable light and the unimaginable emptying of Himself in the assumption of a human frame. It meant the unthinkable mystery that God the Creator would enter the world through the womb of a young maiden whom He Himself created, and ultimately, the shocking culmination of God hanging on a cross—the eternal statement of His endless hatred of sin and everlasting love of mankind.
The Baby that we find in the manger was the same One who was eternally the Possessor of All, the Author of Life, the uncreated One who was with God from everlasting (Mic. 5:2). He did not consider His eternal exaltation as something to be grasped and used for His own gain, but rather He chose in transcendent love to empty Himself of so great an exaltation, making Himself of no reputation and taking on the form of a bondservant (Phil. 2:6–7).
Out of the erupting love and desire of the Godhead, the Son left the covering of unapproachable light and the vastness of His heavenly riches, wrapping Himself in the profound obscurity of poor humanity and becoming to the natural eye nothing more than a newborn Jewish boy, and later a typical young man, son of a carpenter, from Nazareth. In these obscure, ordinary beginnings, the extraordinary occurred: God took on the plight of humanity, the weakness and frailty of our dilemma and forever assumed His identity as our Brother, making us bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh forever.