All is Well - Part 55

Good Stuff

October 10, 2015 By Shelly Durkee

There has been some excellent content as of late. Stuff that I’ve filed away in Evernote, for review later, or words that have caused me to rethink things–sentences that have challenged me, convicted me, pushed me.

I thought that, tonight, I’d share a few items that have caught my attention over the last few weeks:

From The Gospel Coalition: Don’t Give them Hallmark Platitudes

Yes. Platitudes and Hallmark cards and cliches—these are the things that do not bring hope, or comfort, even, to those in the throes of despair. No, what people need, in their darkest moments, is Habakkuk. The truth of it. The author, Eric Raymond, lays out a roadmap that ends in salvation. Yes, salvation of the soul, but I would also say salvation of the mind. Habakkuk is a huge book for me; one I return to regularly, for all the reasons that Raymond lists.

From Lore Ferguson: Good Shepherds and the Good Shepherd

I like reading what Lore writes. She has a way of crafting words, that causes them to sink deep. In this post, Lore examines shepherding–what that looks like, and what it should look like for those who shepherd congregations. No, I am not a pastor, per se, but her words struck a chord as the head of my household, with the responsibility of shepherding my crew well. Important stuff.

From John Piper and DesiringGod.org: When Should We Pray for God to Take Us Home?

Piper’s words here cut a deep trench. All of them, but particularly the 5th paragraph down.

All who wander are not lost….

You would think that, with as much as I have traveled lately for work, that I wouldn’t want to travel any. And, there is truth in that–travel messes me up. I am gone again next week, and already dreading it. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy the travel–exploring, experiencing new things, seeing new sights, meeting new people, eating new foods. Here are two articles that have me wanting to pack my backpack:

Train Ride Across America: Across the USA by Train for Just $213

So, how cool would that be? My kids have done this–they traveled from Virginia to Seattle last summer, via train, and then flew home. I’m seriously considering this, for next year. I would use it to spend a week or so seeing the country, while also using it for concentrated writing time. Amtrak even has a writing internship where they give free tickets to writers to travel the rails and spend time at their craft. I would never be chosen, but goodness, that would be the darn coolest thing.

Antarctica: How to Survive Winter in Antarctica

This isn’t a new article, but it is one that I recently dug back up to re-read. I want to do this. I want to hole up, in Antarctica, for a winter, and see the stars and the Aurora Borealis and hibernate in isolation.

Sermons:

I’m not sure what the title of the sermon was, but this sermon on Marriage, by our pastor, Michael Howard, was tremendous. Best sermon I have ever heard, on the subject. It was so hard to listen to, but also so important. I wish I could get everyone I know–married, single, widowed, young, old–to listen to this sermon. You can find the link here: Seaford Baptist Church

Also, this on Psalm 22: Why Doesn’t God Act the Way I Want Him To? contains solid words that remind us who God is–and the hope we can find when we approach God respectfully, but unfiltered and in complete honesty.

Upcoming Books of Note

I have two pre-ordered books that will be arriving soon. Very much looking forward to both:

Preparing for Heaven: What Dallas Willard Taught Me About Living, Dying, and Eternal Life by Gary Black

The Songs of Jesus: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms by Timothy Keller

Music of Note

Here are some tunes I’ve come across, that I’ve enjoyed lately:

Far Kingdom ~ The Gray Havens

Not my usual style, but I’m quite taken with this song:

There is a far, far kingdom
There at the end of the sea
Where they know my name
And until that far, far kingdom
Calls me home
Oh, my soul, I will wait

Undone ~ Sovereign Grace

Sovereign Grace’s newest album dropped this week. There were only a couple of tracks on it, that really caught my attention. The song Undone is one of them, and may be something I introduce my church to in November:

We were ruined in Your presence
And tearing at the seams
Our eyes had gazed upon the King of kings

The other was their take on the hymn “Blessed Assurance”….it’s just pure joy to sing loudly to.

Movies:

I’ve not had any time for TV late–which is fine for me; I pretty much find TV to be a complete waste of time–but I have been to a couple of excellent movies. One of note is Everest. I saw it last weekend with my boy. I had read Jon Krakauer’s book “Into Thin Air” several years ago, so it was interesting to see it on the screen. Good grief, Everest is beautiful. Someday, I will go to Nepal.

Tonight I’m going to see The Martian. I almost picked up the book that it is based on in an airport bookstore this past summer, but didn’t. Maybe I still will….

Johnny Cash–I so love to listen to Johnny Cash. If you have access to CMT, there was a great documentary a few weeks ago–it was so, so good. You wouldn’t think that a documentary about a rebellious and broken soul would move a person to worship, but this did. You may be able to access the show here: Johnny Cash: American Rebel

Boots:

I needed a new pair of winter boots. So, I got these. I love them. But they have a heel, so I’ll probably fall.

Oh well, I’ll look good, as I crash into the ground.

Flooded by Grace: This Will Always Be My Home (The Post-Storm High Tide Flood of 2015)

October 5, 2015 By Shelly Durkee

It’s Sunday Afternoon.

I’ve just returned from scouting out the small, marshy peninsula that I live on, here on the East Coast. We’ve had an incredible amount of rain over the last several days, accompanied by wind. In fact, all night last night, I lay in bed and listened as tree limbs and branches cracked and landed on my roof. I’ll have to climb up there tomorrow and get them off.

High Tide is 30 minutes from now, and flooding has commenced. My house is fine—I live on higher spot of this lowland. But just one street from my house, the water is over the main road. And, between my house and my church, a huge tree has fallen–its roots no longer capable of finding purchase in the soggy ground–and has blocked a side road and is laying across a garage.

I had ridden out to the end of our main road and then waded in further, to the point, to try to convince one of my favorite senior adult widows to bring her dog and come stay at my house until the flood waters passed. She is stubborn, though, like me (that’s probably why I love her so much) and wouldn’t budge, and wouldn’t let me stay there with her until the danger passed. She didn’t have water in the house for hurricane Isabel, and she is in contact with her son, so I agreed to wade back out.

Of course, me, being me, with all of my gracefulness, and in my Sunday skirt, faceplanted into the water as I waded out. Nice. Soaked.

Stay with me here, though–there is a purpose to my rambling.

My heart aches for my neighbors this afternoon, as they face potential loss of property. Absolutely aches for them. And as I traveled back to my house, I looked at my fellow neighbors standing in their yards, talking together, surveying the situation, wading through water to check on each other.

And in those moments, this thought came to mind: This is my home.

And I am so grateful.

I’ve been here, a long time.

Longer than anywhere else I’ve ever lived; apart from Iowa.

And that is a strange feeling, to me, in both my mind and my soul.

I remember another, very similar storm, in another October, several years ago now.

We had flown here, from Hawaii, “in view of a call”. (For those not familiar with the phrase, it essentially means for a job interview.)

We flew hours and hours and hours, and upon arrival, discovered that my luggage had not arrived with me. And then, that same night, we attended Wednesday service, and then sat in an interview–for hours, until way past midnight–in the home of church members who live on the same point that I waded out to this afternoon.

It was such a strange weekend, all around. We met some incredible folks–folks that I now consider family, who I delight in worshiping with each and every Sunday. We also met some folks who didn’t want us here, and that was hard, but I understood why (their hearts were hurting from other situations). We sat with what would become fellow-staff-members-and-friends for hours, talking, eating waffles, laughing-yes, but also hearing their hurts and concerns and visions for the church. The time together was real, authentic, beautiful, cherished.

It was a very, very good weekend, but it was also so hard. I didn’t know why, really, we were pursuing this. I didn’t understand. And my disbelief in the reality of God, at the time, was this tidal wave that was threatening to break. I knew how to talk the talk, but I also was certain that what we were peddling was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. I wasn’t certain that He even existed.

The Friday night before our all-church question-and-answer session, I was awakened sometime in the early, early hours of the morning, by a terrible nightmare. And as I lay there in that unfamiliar bedroom trying to calm my racing heart and orient myself, a tremendous nor’easter battered the windows to our room (though I didn’t know what a “nor’easter” was at the time…I certainly do now…). The wind whistled, the rain was cacophonous, and I was afraid. Terrified, really.

But not of the storm that whipped the trees outside; storms don’t scare me. At all. I was scared of so much more; including our potential future in this foreign are of the country.

The next morning, the roads to the church were flooded, much like they are this afternoon. Not to the extent of today, but there was standing water on the roadways, as the tide pushed in and pushed out. But we made our way to the church, and pushed forward with the interview.

And, here I am today, years later, in that very same marshy, backwoods, flooded peninsula.

And I’m calling it home.

It won’t always be home. I recognize that fully. My gut–my intuition–tells me that this is not where I will always live. I don’t know fully what that means, today. But there will come a day, when another part of the country will be my new address.

But, for now, this is home. And, in a very real sense, this will always be a “home” to me.

It is where my children have been raised.

It is where my dear, dear church family resides.

It is where I was introduced to authors of books–such as Yancey, and Stott, and Willard, and Keller, and my “Uncle”, C.S. Lewis), and then to the recognition of scripture as truth, that eventually led me to know that God is real. And that He saves. And that grace is truth. For those facts, alone, this will always be home.

It is where I was baptized, in obedience and–for this rebellious soul–in surrender.

It is where unbelievably hard things happened. Horrific things; terrifying things, earth shattering things.

But, it is also where tremendous grace was poured out in my life and my crew’s life–healing rain, in the form of a church and a community that has loved us, and been gracious to us, and has cared for us in innumerable ways.

And, it is where overwhelming joy has been found, even in the midst of the flood waters of tremendous heartache and grief.

This is home.

And, this morning, as I sat in church and watched as–once again–a huge vacuum tube snaked across the altar in attempts to deal with the soaked carpet and water-filled electrical panels due to the rising groundwater bubbling up through the foundation, and I listened to my young pastor preach an incredible sermon that absolutely wrecked my soul on many levels–because of the hard truth contained within, and the truth of scripture, and the grief of the loss of so much–even in the midst of that which threatened to flood my soul, I was settled.

I was settled because truth is truth. God is God. Grace is grace. Family is family.

And home is home. For now, and always, even when I am called away from here.

And always, until I am called Home, to where there will be no more tears. No more floods. No more nightmares. No more sorrow.

Because here, in this marshy backwoods jut-of-land, I met God.

And He is my Everything.

“Teach Us to Know that we Can Not Know…..” (Tozer’s Prayer)

September 29, 2015 By Shelly Durkee

God,

You are the Known Unknowable.

The Unknowable Known.

And we, in our inquisitiveness, in our nosiness, in our insatiable quest for knowledge and knowledge and more knowledge,

find that to be a very hard thing.

Or, at least, I do. But I know there are many like me, too.

We are told, in some areas of scripture, that You are knowable–and certain. Solid. Unchanging. Reliable. Trustworthy. Knowable.

We see it in Jeremiah 9:23-24:

²³Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, ²⁴but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

and also in Philippians 3:10:

⁸Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— ¹⁰that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

And Scripture is truth. You are knowable.

And so, we seek you out. We study Your word, trusting it to be truth. We sit under sound teaching and preaching, trusting it to bring us closer to knowing you. We pray–and pray–seeking to sense Your presence. And we do–we sense your presence. Not always, but enough to know that it is unmistakably real; enough to push past our doubts.

And, we are grateful. We are so grateful, that you are knowable.

However.

However, there is also a level of unknowability about You. You who created the earth and created us and who was before creation, You who are the Godhead three-in-one, a mystery unexplainable, You who are Omniscient and Omnipresent and so many other huge theological words that we can only scarcely grasp—there is an unknowability about You.

And we, who ponder too deeply, who want answers and explanations and what to be able to “fit” You into our definition search boxes and into our White-Board Columns succinctly and precisely—well, sometimes we flounder a bit.

There is even a theological term, for this unknowing of you–The Incomprehensibility of God.

There are things about You, that are beyond our ability to understand.

There are things about You, that are hidden from us. As it should be.

We see that in Deuteronomy 29:29–“²⁹“The secret things belong to the Lord our God….”

And elsewhere, in broader strokes, as we contemplate words from the Prophets, as we gaze upon the cross and marvel at the sacrifice, as we read about the transfiguration and resurrection and ascension, as we wade deep into the words found in Revelation.

There are things we cannot know, answers we cannot grasp, concepts that are beyond our finite reach.

And, I suppose, we should feel comfort in that. Because, if these things were not so, then You would not be God.

And, O, my soul, we need you to be God.

And so tonight, I am taken by a prayer, written to you, by A.W. Tozer. Mainly, because it is most assuredly a prayer that I, myself, should pray. Regularly.

Maybe even every day.

Maybe even every morning.

Before the day gets away from me. And before my mind gets wrapped up in the unknowing.

Maybe these words, from Tozer, need to be my words, on a consistent basis:

“Teach us to know that we can not know, for the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Let faith support us where reason fails, and we shall think because we believe, not in order that we may believe.

In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”

Yes. Yes.

Teach us to know that we can not know. And that it is ok. It is ok. Teach us to keep searching, to keep asking, to keep drawing near to You through prayer, through scripture work, through sitting under solid teaching, but please, O God, teach us this also–that we can not know. And then give us the faith required to support us. We like reason. We trust in reason, just as we trust in the chairs we sit in to hold us up. Grant us, through you mercy and grace, the faith required to support us, much like our favorite chairs support us.

Give us faith. We can not produce it, on our own.

And then remind us that our thinking should be because we believe, and not in order that we may believe.

Because, o God, I get that wrong, so often.

Amen.

Toska

September 26, 2015 By Shelly Durkee

I came across a word a few nights ago that I believe will find itself into my list of cherished words.

(Yes, I have an actual list.)

It will join the likes of grace, joy, sovereignty, expanse, sehnsucht, perspicuity, forgiveness, still, steadfast, family, advent, imputation, prayer, sola gratia………..shall I go on? My list is long….

Anyway, I stumbled across Toska a few days ago, and I am quite taken with it.

Partly, it strikes me because I am reading a new (to me) book by C.S. Lewis (my adopted uncle, though he does not know that–yet). Titled Studies in Words, it is exactly what it sounds like. Lewis takes 9 words, and thoroughly examines them. Only a true logophile would enjoy it, probably. And, I guess I qualify as a logophile, because I collect words like others collect baseball cards. So, to get to read my favorite author tear apart words and get to their true meaning, with much wit? Yes. Bring it.

So reading that has caused me to be more aware of words, in general, over the past couple of days.

But the other reason Toska has me is also related to my Uncle Lewis, because the definition of “Toska” reminds me so much of his story. And mine.

Toska is a Russian word that, quite simply, does not translate well. Or, does not translate, at all. No one has successfully been able to move it to the English–or any other–language, without losing its true essence.

As a noun, an attempt at a definition is this: “a dull ache of the soul; a spiritual anguish”.

But, it is so, so much more than that.

Vladimir Nabokov had this to say about “Troska”:

“No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

It is a word, as Nabokov aptly describes, with many shades to it. It can be deep, with intense aching. It can be a dull yearning. It could even be restlessness, with no real awareness as to why one was restless.

I think my soul–and mind–are familiar with Troska.

But isn’t it interesting that Nabokov, and the formal definition, for that matter, both indicate that–in the case of troska–there is often the absence of awareness of what specifically is causing the ache; of what is causing the soul to miss–something.

And that, too is where my Uncle Lewis can step back into the picture.

Lewis is the one who introduced me to the word “sehnsucht”.

C.S. Lewis spoke often about “longing”–that yearning for something, but not quite being able to capture what that “something” is. We’ve all known that sensation at the very depth of our souls. And minds. For Lewis, sehnsucht embodied “the inconsolable longing in the heart for we know not what.”

He wrote much about this longing in reference to “Home”—our true home, for those of us who are Christ-followers. Home, eternal. Home, where there are no more tears. Home, whatever it may look like, where we will actually, finally, truly feel “at home”.

We ache for this, as humans, because we were created to be with our creator. There will be a day.

Or, as Lewis wrote: “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”

But Lewis also talked about longing for Joy.

Joy, to Lewis, was something far beyond happiness. It was deeper, longer, wider, more encompassing. And it did–something–to a person. Something far beyond what merely having a good day, or getting good news, or enjoying a nice dinner with friends does.

It points toward something. The object of its source.

Joy always points toward God.

Lewis wrote: “All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still ‘about to be’.”

Joy reminds us–reminds me–of the only source of joy–my Lord and my God.

And, God alone is the only one able to satisfy the troska of our souls. He is the only one who can satisfy the sehnsuct of our souls. And He is the only one who joy points to.

There is none other.

And while we have glimpses, most certainly, of joy here and now, and while troska most certainly is soothed to a degree by our worship, our prayer, our loving others, and our recognition of who God is, it will never be completely eradicated or satisfied until our sehnsucht is also fulfilled. Until we see Him, face to face.

So, yes, here in the last two verses of our canon of scripture, we find this:

²⁰He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen.Come, Lord Jesus!

²¹The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.

Amen, indeed.