This message was recorded at ICA-Cambodia, October 2018. Towards the end, the congregation sings a bit, and then the message continues: Songs of Ascent, part 1
This message looks at Psalms 120-124 and should be available as a podcast on iTunes by Friday.
May God bless the reading and preaching of His Word!
all for ONE,
Jonathan T.
Elizabeth is at A Life Overseas today. . . .
Home is a complicated word. A complicated idea. What is it? Where is it? As global nomads, we’re not entirely sure how we feel about home. We’re not sure we have it, and we’re not sure how to get it. We know the correct spiritual answer – that Christ is our home. That He is busy preparing an eternal home for us. And that even now, He makes His home in our hearts, wherever we go. Still, we search for a more earthly home. A physical place to set up camp for a while.
As an adult Third Culture Kid, I’ve spent a lot of time seeking out roots. But lately I’ve been wondering if I should stop my search. I’m far too easily disappointed; permanence of people or place is not something we’re promised in this life. Even so, we need a support system for lives as portable as ours. This summer I started describing those supports as tent pegs.
A tent is a temporary shelter, and the tent pegs that fasten it to the ground also provide only temporary security. Tents and tent pegs are mobile, going with us wherever we go. They allow us to make a home right here, right now. And when the time comes, they allow us to make a home somewhere else too. Every time we pull our tent pegs up out of the ground, pack them in our bags, and move on, we can take the time to hold each tent peg in our hand and remember.
Finish reading here.
Listen to this message on hope here, or via the trotters41 podcast. (21 minutes)
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Some excerpts and quotes:
“The prophetic poet asserts hope precisely in exile.” — Walter Brueggemann
If you’re not really feeling it. If you’re not feeling happy-clappy-Jesus-is-alive-and-all-my-problems-are-fixed, then take heart, because that’s precisely where hope lives.
“Hope expressed without knowledge of and participation in grief is likely to be false hope that does not reach despair. Thus…it is precisely those who know death most painfully who can speak hope most vigorously.” — Brueggemann
We need this reminder.
We need to remember that true hope is not just optimism. True hope is not a flimsy, fluffy thing. No, true hope, Biblical hope, sees it all. It sees the bad, the hard, the pain. It sees the depths and the darkness. It sees the world’s sin and my own sin.
And it keeps on seeing… all the way to Christ. In the end, deep hope must be securely grounded in the character and love of God.
“Speech about hope cannot be explanatory and scientifically argumentative; rather, it must be lyrical in the sense that it touches the hopeless person at many different points. More than that, however, speech about hope must be primarily theological.” — Brueggemann
“Hoping is not dreaming.” “[Hope is] a confident, alert expectation that God will do what he said he will do. It is imagination put in the harness of faith.” – Eugene Peterson
“Hope is a projection of the imagination; so is despair.” –Thornton Wilder
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Psalm 130 A song for pilgrims ascending to Jerusalem.
1From the depths of despair, O LORD,
I call for your help.
2Hear my cry, O Lord.
Pay attention to my prayer.
3LORD, if you kept a record of our sins,
who, O Lord, could ever survive?
4But you offer forgiveness,
that we might learn to fear you.
5I am counting on the LORD;
yes, I am counting on him.
I have put my hope in his word.
6I long for the Lord
more than sentries long for the dawn,
yes, more than sentries long for the dawn.
7O Israel, hope in the LORD;
for with the LORD there is unfailing love.
His redemption overflows.
8He himself will redeem Israel
from every kind of sin.
by Elizabeth
You have walked with God in this place a long time, and He has walked with you. He has been beside you and inside you this whole time. The same Spirit remains in you and with you in your new place.
This place has changed you, and you have changed this place. Do not be distressed if you don’t understand everything that has happened and that is happening. Remember that the stories God writes are always long. They unfold over generations, not days or weeks or even months.
You have been here long enough to understand some of what God is writing, for both yourself and the people you’ve served, but some things may not make sense yet. Do not fret, and do not fear. The Father will show it all to you One Day. Until That Day, remember that you leave with our love, even as you live within God’s love.
Many years ago you came to this place as a foreigner, and the place you’re going now may also seem foreign to you. Everyone and everything has changed, including you.
So in the days and months and years to come, when you feel misunderstood, remember that no one understands your foreignness like Jesus, the One who came to the most foreign land to show his beloved creatures Truth and Light. He will understand your sorrows like no other.
You have seen so much change in your years here. Change in the people around you, change in yourself, change in the people you’re returning to. And you are tired. So tired. No one can work and live as long as you have and not be tired. Remember that Christ is your rest. (And on your journey, also remember to sleep.)
Circumstances change, and communities change, and in the end, He is all we have to hold onto. So don’t lose hope: He IS our hope. Hold onto Him, and remember that His love never fails. It will never fail you.
Though organizations may fail you, though supporters may fail you, though cultural acquisition may fail you, though years of experience may fail you, though people you love and invested in may fail you, though you may even feel you’ve failed yourself, still one thing will not fail you: the love of the Great Three in One will never fail.
And One Day, this squeezing in your heart and this aching in your bones from all these years and all these travels and all the years and travels to come, it will all be undone. Everything will be made new. Remember this.
Originally appeared at A Life Overseas.
by Jonathan
Some call it pessimism. Unspiritual. A sickness best treated with peppy music and cliché-riddled Christianese. They caution and guard against sadness, considering it a rabbit hole (or a worm hole) leading nowhere good. Others call it holy. Jeremiah-ish. Defending it with the label of realism – open eyes that see things as they truly are.
It is Fundamental Sadness.
Do you know what it feels like, this fundamental sadness? The sadness that seems to be part of all things?
Sometimes the sadness is very personal; it’s the loss of a sister or a father or a good friend. Sometimes it’s the loss of a country or long-treasured plans.
Sometimes the sadness is more global. It’s the emotional darkness that comes after you hear about Las Vegas, Mogadishu, the Yazidis, Paris, the Rohingya, or Raqqa. Sometimes its triggered by hashtags like #MeToo or #BringBackOurGirls.
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It is the blazing sunset that sears, not because of who’s present, but because of who’s absent.
It is the baby’s cry in a mother’s arms that taunts your empty ones.
It is the background sadness, fundamental, and seemingly underneath all things.
It’s the threat of miscarriage behind every pregnancy.
It’s the one who sees the beauty of the dawn, but feels deep in his gut that the dawn comes before the dusk – that sunrise precedes sunset.
It is the lover who knows, at the beginning of a beautiful kiss, that it will end.
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“…of all conceivable things the most acutely dangerous thing is to be alive.”
— G.K. Chesterton
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For me, this foundational sadness is not necessarily depressing, but it is always pressing: exerting force, demanding to be heard, demanding to be observed.
Do you know this feeling?
People get scared when I talk like this. I sort of do too. What will people think? This doesn’t sound right. Or mature. Or Holy.
And yet Jesus wept.
“And yet.” A powerful reminder, hinting at the deeper magic.
Jesus knew Jerusalem would destroy the prophets, and he knew Rome would destroy Jerusalem.
And yet.
Though the sadness feels fundamental, the deeper magic is there, waiting, pulsing. It absorbs the sadness, bearing it, transforming it, then re-birthing it.
Continue reading at A Life Overseas.
Jonathan & Elizabeth Trotter 