We recently moved to the city and I have been stirred to reach out to people, to learn to love my neighbors, to get involved in the life of the city.  I have been inspired by Jeremy Begbie’s “Future Hope” lecture as it relates to art making as well as to engaging in “making all things new.”  

But my real longing, my real loyalty is to another city and this piece reflects that sometimes hopeful, sometimes impatient longing for that city.  There is hope, otherwise we would give up counting the days, but as the days stretch out we can be impatient, I know I am at times.  The Psalms ask several times “How long?”  How long would the enemies prevail against God’s people?  How long would God allow suffering?  How long until they saw their desires?  

The psalms validate that longing and that question as it is asked over and over again.  Faith is total, though it doesn’t have to always answer all of our questions.  We may not have immediate answers to dilemmas that face us but we are not without assurance and hope. And so at times we wait, we look and we long.

 (Mostly) found wood, old calendars, paint.  51″ x 51″

Shield

But You, O LORD, are a shield about me,
My glory, and the One who lifts my head. 

Perils, shouts of despair and hopelessness, shame, enemies, failures, temptations, fears, regrets, trials.  Not all the time and not all at once, but these are common struggles for us all.  One of the surest places in prayer I ever come to is the declaration that God is my shield, He lifts my head and He stands between me and my enemies. 

Ultimately, it is in Christ that we see this expressed, He bore our sorrows and the shame for our sins before His Father so that we might have access to pray and find acceptance with a holy God. 

Psalms 3, 84, 91

Every Tear

You have taken account of my wanderings;
Put my tears in Your bottle
Are they not in Your book? 

Every tear is kept and marked down.  Not a trial or tribulation is missed. 

I think it is easy to miss that God’s omniscience is not a divine expression of scrapbooking.  We aren’t comforted by the fact that God is all knowing or compulsive enough to keep track of everything, but that He thinks fondly enough of us to take note of our every trial and every tear.  It is great reminder that we can confidently draw near to Him, casting our burdens and anxieties on Him because He truly does care for us, on intimate level.

Psalm 56:8

Everything

Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.
Praise the LORD! 

Psalms are songs, no doubt, and most if not all, were put to music, but they are also instruction.  They call us to praise God in all aspects of our lives, sadness, anger, joy, triumph, lament, dedication.  But we aren’t all musicians that get to play in the great assembly of saints, and so Psalms ends with the instruction that everything that has breath is to praise God. Everything.

Psalm 150