Concatenation

Life in union with God, I’ve discovered, is a continual process of laying down. Not just lying down (since these words are often confused),  but of releasing what we clutch within our heart and placing it at His feet for Him to decide whether or not to raise it up. He promises us ‘beauty for ashes.’ Clutched tenaciously in our hand, things turn to dust, or even worse, to poison.  Sometimes we lay them down but hover near, ready to take them back up should He appear to be leaving them there on the ground.  Things like hurt, fear, woundedness, rejection, ill-treatment, and the resulting sense of unfairness and injustice, bitterness, resentment....and overall, our own will. 

Jesus modeled both this laying down and the corresponding ‘lying down’ before the Father’s will, when he wrestled in the garden...to the extent that it almost killed Him right there. (Matt. 26:38). We have no real comprehension of the extent of the battle that He fought there. However, we get the tiniest taste of it in our own lives when it seems to take everything we have to lay down our own unforgiveness, rebellion, or willfulness after deep hurt and betrayal, most especially when it's perpetrated by those close to us.

When you meet someone who seems to exude beauty and grace wherever he or she goes, you can be sure she has gone through the fire. You may be tempted to think she has had an easy life, because she appears to glow with joy. Think again. God creates beauty in those who love and trust Him enough to do as He wills with their lives, despite, and even through, deep suffering. He tells us He’ll give us “beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that we might be trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified” [Isaiah 61:3]. * His promises are fulfilled when we are willing to let Him make a concatenation of every trial and circumstance.

He never stands above us with His arms folded, waiting to see if we’ll pass the test. He stoops down, wipes the tears from our eyes with His thumb, and cradles us in our sorrow, saying, “Let me make something beautiful out of this for you...and for others. I know your every pain,  grief, and struggle, as you sit there in the ashes of your hopes and expectations. Give it all to me, even your right to be angry and hurt, and see what I will do.”

But even if He doesn’t choose to act in the way we hope and expect He will, nevertheless we remain at His feet. Nevertheless, we choose His will over ours. Nevertheless, we stay devoted to Him and thankful for His truly amazing grace. This is nitty gritty Worship.

As Job once said, “Even if He kills me, yet I will trust Him” (Job 13:15). Or as Paul stated, “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.”  (2 Timothy 1:12).  Or as Habakkuk affirmed, 17 Though the fig tree does not blossom and there is no fruit on the vines, [though] the product of the olive fails and the fields yield no food, though the flock is cut off from the fold and there are no cattle in the stalls, 18 Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the [victorious] God of my salvation! 19 The Lord God is my Strength, my personal bravery, and my invincible army; He makes my feet like hinds’ feet and will make me to walk [not to stand still in terror, but to walk] and make [spiritual] progress upon my high places [of trouble, suffering, or responsibility]! (Habakkuk 3:17-19} 

Or as Jesus, dripping blood from the burst blood vessels in His forehead, spoke in a struggling whisper of affirmation: “Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done” [Luke 22:42].  And, oh, what beauty He wrought for all of us. May we receive His strength to declare the same in every circumstance we face.


*concatenation:  "a series of interconnected or interdependent things or events."