Take care, Esther, til we have faces.

sorrowing i shall be in spirit

til released from flesh and sin

Take care, Agur, learn to walk--it hurts to fall.
Take care when you invest, that you do so as to free, not to buy.
Take care when you embrace, that you do so as to accept, not to engulf.
Take care with that white-knuckled deathgrip, when you cling on for dear "life."
Take care with that deadly, injurious, unduly possessive mimicry of Love.
Take care lest you love something to death--its and yours.
Take care––your heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick.
Take care––in that desperation, to turn unto Life.
You need a Savior, there is only One.

Foundations, 4.

"How Firm a Foundation" has been one of my favorite hymns since the it was taught to me at children's BSF, where my mom would drag my easily bored second grade self.  This and "To God Be the Glory" are the only two things that I remember from BSF.  Out of all that they tried to teach me anyway--I also remember an old lady songteacher with a peppery frizz head of hair who smelled like cats and butter, my boredom and refusal to go on Tuesday weeknights, and my brother's variations on the themes, the only other fruits of BSF for my unregenerate child self.

But over the years, its verses have stayed with me.  This too, is grace.  The true words are trusty to fill me with confidence in desert seasons such as this past week since finding out on Wednesday, such as Lent around the corner, and such as... oh just... all of life, you know, no big deal.

For one, we sing, but the bulk of it is from the perspective of God speaking to us, singing over us.  Not of any worthy words we can offer to Him.  My faithfulness, He says, not your faith, will be your sustenance.

He commands His own to buck up, fear not.  Because His sustaining self is there with us, here by us,  Emmanuel, to uphold and strengthen and purify--to prove Himself.  The desert is His task and He is the one who will find our way home.

He is trustworthy, the desert rocks cry.

How Firm a Foundation from The Line via Michael

I haven't come across a fair cover on the interwebs until this one. Give it a spin and send other good renditions my way!

Desert, 3.

5. Resolved, to sing to the LORD a new song, for My Help and My Deliverer drew me up from the desert pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a solid rock, making my steps sure; He put a new song in my mouth and He will surely always renew the song of the redeemed.

Desert, 2.

The North American Review, January 1834, remembers William Cowper's bouts of temporary insanity:

"Spent in heavy insensibility, ... he felt for himself a contempt not to be expressed or imagined ... he felt as if he had offended God so deeply that his guilt could never be forgiven... Madness was not far off, or rather madness was already come."

The article ultimately described not the poet's madness, but how God prevented Cowper--from destroying himself (Psalm 124).

***

It would hurt to get disciplined by this desert branch.
It would prob draw blood.
Photo taken in Arizona, February 2010.

***

Among William Cowper's first compositions after his first descent into despair was "There is a fountain,"  which celebrated that, and how, God could remove the stain of even the guiltiest sin.

there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins.

and sinners plunged beneath that flood

lose all their guilty stains!

lose all their guilty stains!

lose all their guilty stains!

and sinners plunged beneath that flood

lose all their guilty stains!

Foundations, 2.

How firm a foundation ye saints of the Lord

Lord the ground is shifting beneath me
Rugs, ashes, tile, asphalt
Crawl, tear, and tangle like stormy waves

is laid for your faith in his excellent Word

but Your Word o Lord stands forever
my heart is willing
Your directions feel far

What more can He say than to you He has said?

hide me in all that cannot be sifted or shaken
that I might hear
the deafening still silence of Your Godness

to you who for refuge to Jesus has fled

that I might fear You
sleep soundly in You tonight
love You into tomorrow
every day
until the day
and every day
thereafter

Turn unto your rest.

Slavery is when I spend every minute of my life attempting to justify myself in the way that this hymn explains Christ has already done.

From whence this fear and unbelief?

Has not the Father put to grief

His spotless Son for me?

And will the righteous Judge of men

Condemn me for that debt sin

Which, Lord, was charged on thee?

Complete atonement You have made,

And to the utmost farthing paid

Whatever Your people owed;

How then can wrath on me take place

If sheltered in Your righteousness,

And sprinkled with Your blood?

If You have my discharge procured,

And freely in my room endured

The whole of wrath divine,

Payment God cannot twice demand--

First at my bleeding Surety's hand,

And then again at mine.

Turn then, my soul, unto your rest!

The merits of your great High Priest

Have bought your liberty;

Trust in his efficacious blood,

Nor fear your banishment from God,

Since Jesus died for thee.

Excess is not abundance. Joyful choose the better part.

Idols once they won you, charmed you,

Lovely things of time and sense.

Gilded thus does sin disarm you...

Arm yourselves, therefore--Been back in Naperville a week now and will stay until the end of this week. Starting to be militant against two decades of clutter, the result of parents who never permitted throwing stuff away. It's exhausting; realizing clutter for what it truly is--putting something off to evaluate, sort out, deal with later--be it mental or relational or any other kind of clutter, I feel its weight and entanglement like I've never before. Of laying up our security in all the wrong homes, of passively holding onto stuff or retaining habits because change takes gruel.


But it all adds up and chokes the abundance right out of life, the purpose out of a house/home, the wholeness out of relationships.

Purge, purge, purge. Confront all this stuff and the memories that are evidence of where my heart has been and what it has contained, and the closets of misplaced affections or mistakes or hurts or distraction that I have held onto--to let go of later.

All of life is repentance--repentance now. Lord let me choose You, now. Help me to stop putting off the choice no matter who tells me it is right to do so, or how sentimental or comfortable or attached or overwhelmed I feel. When I say I'll choose You later, I'm choosing not-You now.

Luke 10:41-42. I have accumulated much to be anxious and troubled about.  Much that belies true security and value. Heart, see true worth. Learn to live more with less.

This hymn keeps playing through my head to remind me of hope. My favorite rendition of it is a mash-up to the tune of "Tis so sweet."

Have you heard Him, seen Him, known Him?

Is not yours a captured heart?

Captivated by His beauty,

worthy tribute haste to bring.

Let His peerless worth constrain thee,

crown Him now unrivaled king.

What has stripped the seeming beauty from the idols of this earth?

Not a sense of right or duty,

but the sight of peerless worth,

the beaming of His beauty,

the unveiling of His heart.

What have we who have companied with Him to do with idols?