Today is a very regular sort of Saturday at the Eisenmenger household. Jim and I stayed in bed just a little late this morning. I won’t say I slept in because a mother doesn’t really sleep when she is listening for each little (and these days big, too) set of feet on the stairs. Then there is the awareness of the tones of interactions. I lay their thinking of all the things I would say if I were actually present with them, and now and then heard something that made me want to holler at them through the passive heat vent in our old farmhouse. It was just the fact that daddies apparently can actually sleep through all of that, that kept me from it. When the mama guilt finally got the best of me, I hauled it downstairs and we began our day. A quick trip to convenient care to check on two swimmer’s and their ears and pancakes for a crowd were obvious first priorities.
All the “normalcy” of today makes me think back to this time last year when Barbra and I were preparing to leave our families and head to Ethiopia to pick up Sisi, Getch, and Masi. We left on July 31st, and along with our dear friends the Knellers, began our journey to bring our children home.
I am not a traveler or a risk taker by nature. I had to fight that nervous, sick feeling, and definitely had to battle all of the “what if’s…?” that wanted to drive away our Lord’s gift of peace. Walking out the Lord’s plan for us last year at this time involved an actual journey, but in a sense following Him always is. I have been studying the Psalms of Ascent in Beth Moore’s “Steppin Up” study. The Psalms of Ascent were songs sung by God’s people on pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate the pilgrim feasts which included the Feast of Unleavened Bread, The Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Tabernacles. The second of the Psalms is Psalm 121. It says, “I raise my eyes toward the mountains. Where will my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; your Protector will not slumber. Indeed, the Protector of Israel does not slumber or sleep. The LORD protects you; the LORD is a shelter right by your side. The sun will not strike you by day, or the moon by night. The LORD will protect you from all harm; He will protect your life. The LORD will protect your coming and going both now and forever.”
This is such an encouragement. I believe that this picture of God as our protector is something that we can absolutely stand on. BUT what about when circumstances feel like our foot just did a whole lot of slippin’. I know of a young, christian man right now for example, who is in a hospital room following a terrible motorcycle accident that happened on his way to church two weeks ago. What is up with that? We all know of situations like this, and the obvious question is, “Uhhhmmmm Lord, what about his coming and going.”.
I am not going to pretend like we can ever really understand this fully. In fact, God tells us in His word that we will not fully understand everything this side of Heaven, but I believe that we can be in a place where we are so set on the truth of God’s word as our highest reality that we are unshakable. As is always the case, it is in the completeness of scripture that we are lead into ALL truth. In Romans 8:38-39 we see, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”.
I am really a pretty simple girl, and the fact that I just quoted scripture twice and used the word “feast” is kind of freaking me out. I am not a Bible teacher, but I am a follower of Jesus Christ who has experienced what it felt like to insist on knowing what every eventuality in the lives of myself and my loved ones was going to look like (and believe me there was nothing that even approached a foot slip in my scenarios). And I have experienced the freedom in knowing that NOTHING takes us out of God’s keeping. NOTHING! Essentially I came to recognize that the truth of God’s word is so far above temporal, worldly scenarios that I must look only to that for my assessment of safety. This does not mean for one moment that I have given the enemy any hand in my life. The opposite is true. I am not only aware of how completely I am held in the hand of my Protector, but I am also free from the fear that the enemy used to put on me when I would contemplate the unexplainables. So, while it is a process that takes choice and practice, I feel like I can now follow the Lord with new confidence in His keeping. That kind of freedom is, as I have said before, the aspect of belonging to Christ that makes knowing Him most tangibly “The pearl of great price” for me.
