God Is Not Silent

Pss. 28:1 “Unto thee will I cry, O LORD my rock; be not silent to me: lest, if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit.”

God Is Not Silent

It is so easy to see God as the silent type when suffering is at your doorstep and you’re begging for help that never seems to arrive. You ask for prayers to be answered, you’re pleading for compassion for your cause, you implore Him to come and relieve your stress but all seems lost and broken. Prayers are hanging in the balance as you impatiently wait for a response.

It is during this time when you begin to doubt and fear whether God even exists and hears you. It is during these times of slow-moving molasses you let fear trickle into your thoughts. Sometimes you see me as a strong woman barreling through doubts and fears but let me tell you, I have days when I too say, My God my God why hast though forsaken me?

Zech. 2:13 “Be silent, O all flesh, before the LORD: for he is raised up out of his holy habitation.”

Let me just say up front, I never doubt that God exists or fear that He’s not hearing me. I know He exists and hears me but for brief moments like when you’re waiting for honey to drip, by the time the drop makes it to the intended place, there’s a smidgen of Him just seemingly letting you fall on your face.

I know it seems like He’s silent but I also know from experience this is when He is doing His finest work. It’s me who feels I’m not patient enough, or I feel insignificant but rest assured, with every breathtaking sunrise He lets me know He’s there, listening and working for the greater good.

Job 4:16 “It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof: an image was before mine eyes, there was silence, and I heard a voice, saying,”

When I was first diagnosed with the disease of a lifetime, I prayed like never before. I begged and pleaded for a miracle that never came and I know full well because I was praying for a whoosh of a magical wand and the reappearance of a normal looking breast and all of this would be whisked away and put into the bad memory box.

God is NOT Merlin the magician! Did He just whoosh Jesus’ suffering away? And here He was God in the flesh suffering bleeding, begging, pleading. Jesus died. While this very well could be my fate, I don’t believe for one minute God is silently planning my demise. He could have had me go the slice, dice, chemo method but that song was not my dance. That was the dance for millions of other people.

He also could’ve just taken me right away, why give me a warning and a chance to change? God works in mysterious ways and while we’re straggling along in a world of distractions, He’s not being silent. He is busy at work preparing the entry of billions of souls to His banquet, in His time, not our time. A legion of Angel’s awaits our arrival and the song of the choir will ring out for us to dance among the stars.

God was not silent when Valentine was imprisoned then beheaded. He allowed such a horrendous physical act to take place because it would one day be a day cherished for all of the love that Valentine brought to the world. Valentine would be remembered for hundreds of years for his earthly love! God is LOVE!

My hope is that God is not preparing me for such a horrible death but for a wonderful life of endurance, patience and beauty that will be carried into the future of those who remember my time here. My prayer is no longer for myself, it’s for the people who need to see, this day and age, that God is never silent. Oh no, He is very much alive and busy at work!

He could’ve given me an instant miracle but what would I or anyone learn from that? He needs the world to see that there are steps to take, patience that is needed, endurance and unfathomable strength to make it to His bountiful banquet. 

He has me writing, teaching and learning at the same time as you. Although He could at any given moment pretend to be a magician for those who need instant gratification, once again, God is not of the fantasy world and He most definitely is not a magician.

Do I paint a grim picture of a punishing God? A God who wants to see you suffer? You’re wrong. Like your very own mother and father, do you see them as the punishing, child-reprimanding beasts that you saw as a child? I know children of an abusive background might see their parents as demons incarnate but the majority of people reading this right now all have been chastised as a child. We were not created as instant all-knowing adults, no, we had to grow and learn from our mother, father, and our surroundings to be who we are today.

If you look at the grand picture, we were once seeds! Watered and nurtured, pruned and snipped, given the right non-toxic fertilizer to bloom and grow. There were times in our life where we didn’t receive enough sun, we were stunted by toxins, and left to learn before growing again. I can’t paint a more poignant picture than that. 

God was not silent then and He most certainly is not silent now! As I endure another day filled with supplements, a disfigured image in the mirror, and a strict diet that will save my life, you might ask, is all of this worth it? And I will say to you now as I did in the beginning, every day I get to see another sunrise is worth every step I take in the ballroom dance of life as I head to the eternal banquet of souls waiting to greet me. YES! Every struggling pain-filled step is worth the enormous abundance of LOVE that I have the pleasure to partake of!

All Glory to God in the Highest! 

Quotation Saturday ~ Faith

Luke 21:19 “In your patience possess ye your souls.” 

ENDURANCE

“I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.” 
― Stephen Fry

“Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.” 
― Haruki Murakami

“No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven.” 
― Orson F. Whitney

“If you're serious about sanctification, you can expect to experience heart-wrenching moments that try your faith, your endurance, and your patience.” 
― Sheri Dew

PATIENCE

“The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.” 
― Paulo Coelho

Patience is not the ability to wait. Patience is to be calm no matter what happens, constantly take action to turn it to positive growth opportunities, and have faith to believe that it will all work out in the end while you are waiting.” 
― Roy T. Bennett

“I realized that the deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able to honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done.” 
― Elisabeth Elliot

“Patience is not passive resignation, nor is it failing to act because of our fears. Patience means active waiting and enduring. It means staying with something and doing all that we can - working, hoping, and exercising faith; bearing hardship with fortitude, even when the desires of our hearts are delayed. patience is not simply enduring; it is enduring well!

Impatience, on the other hand, is a symptom of selfishness. It is a trait of the self-absorbed. It arises from the all too-prevalent condition called "center of the universe" syndrome, which leads people to believe that the world revolves around them and that all others are just supporting cast in the grand theater of mortality in which only they have the starring role.” 
― Dieter F. Uchtdorf

HOPE

“TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.” 
― Howard Zinn

“It isn't as bad as you sometimes think it is. It all works out. Don't worry. I say that to myself every morning. It all works out in the end. Put your trust in God, and move forward with faith and confidence in the future. The Lord will not forsake us. He will not forsake us. If we will put our trust in Him, if we will pray to Him, if we will live worthy of His blessings, He will hear our prayers.” 
― Gordon B. Hinckley

“Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.” 
― Thomas Merton

FAITH

“When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for you to stand upon or you will be taught to fly.” 
― Patrick Overton

“We never know when our last day on earth will be. So, love with full sincerity, believe with true faith and hope with all of your might. Better to have lived in truth and discovered life, than to have lived half-heartedly and died long before you ever ceased breathing. ” 
― Cristina Marrero

“All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired.” 
― Martin Luther

“You are where you need to be. Just take a deep breath.” 
― Lana Parrilla

Rom. 5:3-4 “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope:

Endurance

The wheel... has endured the test of time

2 Cor. 4:16 "For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day."

Endurance

This post was going to be titled I’m Done, had it been written and posted yesterday. Instead, I chose to close down, go inside my head and feel the angst that I was being asked to endure. 

I had an extremely stressed filled month with my son seeking a job, the death in the family from chemo no less (I’m from the school cancer doesn’t kill, chemo does), and then there was hubby and his needed eye doctor appointment and a dental visit. Then there was me tossed in the middle with my illness and need to pick a new doctor. 

All of this came flurrying around my face like confetti from the sky. I blew it away as a wayward strand of hair falling in my face, but the stress had mounted and I could feel the shift, the pain, the hurt. I was trying so hard but it all came crashing around me and I was about ready to give up. I’m done, I said, I’m just done!

My thoughts and feelings were getting hard to catalog. I could not compartmentalize them, I had to face each one head on, I had to endure. I woke this morning with a swift slap in the face with a God moment. My Encouragement For The Day came via my Bible Gateway message. 

This is what greeted me today, first thing in the quiet of the morning:

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 5:3-5 (ESV)

Wow, this is one not to be scanned over real quick; I was forced to read it after that intro. I went through word after word, the writer was a twenty-five-year breast cancer survivor and now after all of these years she’s faced with her daughter having to go through the same exact illness. She couldn’t protect her daughter from this event, they would just have to endure it, together. I’ll hit the high points of the email: Suffering produces endurance, Endurance produces character, character produces hope. 

There it is in a nutshell HOPE! I woke to hope! Yesterday I was done, I was giving up, I was just ready to shove a slice of pizza in my face, stop all supplements, have everyone laugh at me and say I told ya so, and I was making plans in my head to go home, to my Heavenly Home, that is. And I woke to this message of hope. What am I supposed to do with that? Endure and have continued hope is what!

2 Cor. 4:17-18 (KJV) “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

Stress level on a scale of one to ten – nine! let’s go over it:

Me- In need of finding a doctor for this serious illness invading my body. (more on that in later posts)

My son – He found a really good job making good money and a week after he started, he asked for a week vacation at the end of July; a vacation to go to Kentucky to meet online friends. That’s what I taught him, run off and meet your online friends. He’s twenty-one and I cannot stop this train from going down the track, I have my own stress and seriously don’t need this, but it is what it is. He has a hard-as-a-rock head on his shoulders and I can’t say anything. (wow, he’s just like his mother!)

My hubby - An eye doctor’s appointment went well, but the eye doctor of eight years told us this would be the last time we’d see him. Shock, hurt, memories, everything came through the floodgates!

A funeral – Need I say more? His aunt succumbed to chemo.

The dentist – No insurance and a filling it wasn’t meant to be. I won’t say any more than that. This was the tip of the iceberg of a stressful month. Especially when the (doctor’s wife, hygienist) looked at me and asked if I was my husbands' mother. Insult after insult (my brother-in-law writes too, as a hobby, she says.) “Good thing you weren’t working so you could drive your husband to all of the doctor’s appointments.”  Slice after slice, cut, chop, throw me to the wolves. The wolf being a gray-haired, forty-five-year-old overworked mother. I was her target for the day and wonder how she even has the job she has.

I left in tears, wanting to just go home to the Lord. I’m done, I can’t handle this. I can’t handle all of the doubts coming through via my screen from people who say they support me but are really living Doubting Thomas’! The message of what to eat vs. what not to eat, what to take and what not to take, email after email asking to buy this cure in a bottle. No money has me deleting the majority of the supplement spiel.

I woke to find the email telling me to endure. To be filled with hope during a most trying time. To have faith where others wane. To stand tall and muddle through this thickened mire. It is my job to give hope and here I was being filled. I need a break from stress and worry. I need to stand in a downpour and release all that ails me. I need to embrace the journey and walk with hope in my hand.

The Holy Spirit flowing through us is God and His earthly blood/waters running through our veins. There is no doubting in the floodwaters. There may be pain, there sure will be stress, you’ll face trials of ignorance from the outside world but you’ll find the strength in God to endure, whatever it is you have to endure to get through another day.

Isa. 26:4 (KJV) “Trust ye in the LORD for ever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength:”

I give all praise and Glory to God! 

Alleluia AMEN!

Poetry Sunday ~ A Mother's Love

Pss. 131: 2 Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child.

A Mother’s Love

A mother’s love can’t be bought

It’s given without condition

Loving you more than enough

From her own admission.

I find in life friends come and go

But a mother’s love keeps growing

She lifts you up when you fall down

Her endless love keeps showing.

Her heartstrings always tied around

The baby that once was you

She never sees you growing old

Only sees the child she knew.

A mother’s love cannot be bought

She’s forever your lifelong friend.

I admire her more than she knows

Her endurance I commend!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there. Prayers of comfort for all whose mothers have passed on.