Was She Found With Her Hands Wide Open
I was alone, but not really.
The massive Atlantic to my left, a row of beach houses to my right, the setting sun before me, and good salt air in my lungs. I talked to the One who is always in magnificent places. But mostly I listened.
Lost in prayer — positioned to “be still” and listen, I meandered between the incoming tide and the ribbon of water still lingering from morning's high tide. A visual of my aloneness with my Lord. Water shielded me on both sides. The world could not come too near.
All that surrounded me had been authored by the One who was with me.
One can feel like royalty in those places.
Trees blocked the view of houses in the distance. I was truly alone in the middle of His Stuff. And the waters rolled in slowly, closing more and more off from me.
Ahead the incoming tide had broken over the sandy belt I walked on, and the fresh ocean waters began renewing the stale waters of the trapped tidal pools. My pathway closed. A perfect visual of our lives. Is it true for you? It is for me. What we thought would be is not at all where our path leads.
I pressed on until my toe could touch the last dry ripple of sandy beach before the incoming tide covered it over. Turning quickly, I headed back where I had just come from. The path was now closing behind me.
Increasing my pace, I walked with purpose, not wanting the waters to catch me. Looking behind me, I saw waves sweep over the place where I had been. If I had stubbornly remained there — I would have been in trouble. The waters came rushing in as if on assignment bringing strong currents with them.
What a picture of my life...of many lives…of your life perhaps.
My path had seemed right. It had been. But when scripture says, “For everything there is a season…” it is serious.(Ecclesiastes 3:1)
For 30 years I had lived in one place, then, the tide changed, the path began to close. God was insistent on showing me the purpose He created me for; He would not let me miss the clarity of His call.
Many have asked me, “How do you know for sure when God is calling you?”
This walk on the beach is a visual picture of the answer to that question.
God is not vague. He will not carelessly let us “miss” what HE is calling us to do.
He doesn't play charades with us. He makes it clear. Moses couldn't say the bush was not burning. He could have ignored it, but he couldn’t say it was not burning.Jonah couldn't say the fish was not real. He knew what its belly smelled like.
God is clear.
There are great mysteries that surround God's ways — His ways are not our ways and they never will be. He is God, we are not. We never will be, never could be, never should try to be. Oh but…don’t we all know someone who secretly sort of thinks they are…? God help them.
God's clarity and ability is beyond what we can even imagine. He opened the Red Sea for the Israelites to pass through, then He closed it on those who pursued them. He put a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day to guide them through the desert.
God is clear in His communications. But He does wait until we are ready to actually listen.
What a thought — that God waits…on us.
So how can we know when God is guiding us this way or that?
First, we must be willing to pause...
pause long enough for the flurry of life to settle, be still, ask Him, and wait...
We must be willing to wait on the Lord, just as He has been willing to wait on us.
The problem is not that God no longer speaks —
the problem is that we don't take the needed time to listen.
What happens when we don't pause and respect that God is God and He will speak when He knows we are ready? We try and press the matter. We want to move ahead and make something happen. Sometimes we get angry with God. Then we find ourselves in the middle of swirling tidal waters pressing in all around us with swift currents. We thought... but then... and now... we are forced to a place of stillness that doesn't feel good. And we cry out, “Where are you God?!”
We blame Him for where we are, when where we are was not His doing.
Before Kenya arrived on our horizon, my feet were set on a good path back on Mockingbird Road. I loved that path, it was sweet and simple and all I had dreamed of for our growing old days. The front porch swing was set in place for our old age years.
But slowly, ever so slowly, like advancing tide waters, that life seemed to close off from me.
My eyes could see “my plans” being diverted, our home no longer felt like our home.
So I paused, whined a bit, cried a lot, and then asked — What do you want Lord?
And He answered. Then we had a choice.
We could ignore His answer and press ahead with our plans or we could change our course and obey.
The former would have brought tidal waters swirling around us, for GOD will not be ignored. There would have been consequences. The latter would break us of ourselves, take us to new horizons, and fill us with more of Him.
Can’t we all feel it deep inside; the pressing that there is “more”. It’s a “more” the world can’t give us. Can’t buy it, steal it, or run away to find it.The MORE we crave is found in the laying down of ourselves and the taking up of HIM. “He must increase, I must decrease”. (John 3:30)
So we listened to the Holy Recalculating and changed course.
Wisdom told us, “Don't look back, keep pressing on toward the goal you are called to”. But, I confess, I nostalgically looked back. Grief almost broke me when I looked back. Life was only going to come by looking ahead.
There is joy and peace in the obedience. But as we obey, we can not fool ourselves into thinking we can have it our way. We can't author a spec of it.
We want to have at least a degree of what we want. We might be willing to give up some of what we want — our plans, our dreams, our goals, our desires. But when it comes to laying it ALL down, we shrink at the thought of having no control, no say, no input, no power.
But the definition of surrender is…“to abandon oneself entirely”, “to give in to”, “to give up or hand over”. And when Jesus died on that cross, his hands were open —
HE SURRENDERED ALL.
When God calls, we must surrender before we can obey.
That day, on my beach walk, I was alone... but not really.
As I watched the sun fading and turned to leave the beach, an old horse-shoe-crab shell caught my eye. Something gave me pause.
I knelt down beside the old shell and it came flooding into my heart... “someday you'll be just like me, you'll die too. All you do now will be added to the great efforts of the many who have obeyed the One. There will come a day when you won't be able to walk any path. So choose carefully now, walk the right path. Your days are numbered; they were before you were born. Your last day is already known in the Heavenlies. It will arrive and you'll be done. You will come to the day when you'll have your last chance to obey, and it will be then that you'll be more thankful than ever you did. And then, you'll go HOME. And whether you walked perfectly or not won't matter a smidgen. If you pleased others or disappointed them, won't matter a mite. The topic of conversation when you open your eyes above will be —
“Where was she found walking...
did she stay true to the way...
surrendered…
obeying...
was she found in the place He made her for...
were her hands wide open??”
Sitting beside the old shell of the silent horse-shoe crab, I looked at my feet.
Oh Lord... do what you must... but don't let my skin covered bones get in the way... place me soundly where You choose... use me up just like this old shell here... let's get the most out of the mist of me (James 4:14)… thank you for grace... thank you for mercy... may I be found on the path of your choosing when you give me that last chance at obedience... laying it all down... I’ll finally go HOME. And may my hands be well practiced at being — wide open.
