And then there's...the fleas

“Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”  -Sarah Ban Breathnach

“Out of the darkness of the cross, the world transfigures into new life.  And there is no other way.”  -Ann Voskamp

“He who calls you is faithful” 1 Thessalonians 5:24

Out of the pit and into the light.  Prayers of the saints carry the weary.   A renewed strength.   Eyes on the Grace Giver…Soul Saver…Kinsmen Redeemer… keeps all else in check.  Because it’s here that I realize who I am and where my hope lies.  That I am broken and busted up.  That no matter how hard I try to fix and change and organize and carry the self-sufficient torch to triumph, the light snuffs out with the smallest gust of wind.   Wrecked, I abandon all hope in myself…which proves to be the safest most beautiful place where peace clears the angst.  And I can finally give over the burden of expectation to the One sweetly waiting to take it.  Whose light will show me the way and whose torch cannot be extinguished.  

Because He is faithful.  He has walked close and carried our tender hearts and “taken account of our wanderings.  He has put our tears in His bottle –Psalm 56:8”.  Flames raging all around, but we are not on fire.  Because the Lord is with us walking in the blazing furnace, protecting and loving us (Daniel 3).  Flames only to purify and burn away dross that hinders hearts from living fully alive in Christ.   

Corrie Tem Boon in her book The Hiding Place has been teaching me so much about grace and suffering and purpose and joy.  She and her sister have been taken to a concentration camp in the heart of Germany where the atrocity is almost too much to bear.  They ask how can they get thru this?  And God had just given them their answer that morning as they had read their daily Bible reading (1 Thess 5:11-18) to hundreds of women in their barracks that was designed for 400 and held 1400.  Can. You. Imagine.  The conditions were appalling.  

“Comfort the frightened, help the weak, be patient with everyone.  See that none of us repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all…’”

 “Go on, “said Betsie.  “That wasn’t all.”

“Oh yes:  ‘…to one another and to all.  Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus”

“That’s it, Corrie!  That’s His answer.  ‘Give thanks in all circumstances!’  That’s what we can do.  We start right now to thank God for every single thing about this new barracks!”

I stared at her, then around me at the dark, foul-aired room.

“Such as?” I said. 

“Such as being assigned here together.”

I bit my lip. “Oh yes, Lord Jesus!”

“Such as what you’re holding in your hands.”

I looked down at the Bible.  “Yes!  Thank You, dear Lord, that there was no inspection when we entered here!  Thank you for all the women here in this room who will meet You in these pages. “

“Yes,”  said Betsie.  “Thank You for the very crowding here.  Since we’re packed so close, that many more will hear!”  She looked at me expectantly.  “Corrie!” she prodded.

“Oh, all right.  Thank You for the jammed, crammed, stuffed, packed, suffocating crowds.”

“Thank You,” Betsie went on serenely, “for the fleas and for—“

The fleas!  This was too much.  “Betsie, there’s no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.”

“’Give thanks in all circumstances,’” she quoted.  It doesn’t say ‘in pleasant circumstances.’ Fleas are a part of this place where God has put us.”

And so we stood between the piers of bunks and gave thanks for the fleas.  But this time I was sure Betsie was wrong. 

 A few pages later in the book, God shows Corrie how He had used the fleas.  Whenever they would hold their “worship” services in the barracks, reading the Bible, praying, singing softly as the Word of God was passed around in Dutch, German, French, Polish, Russian and Czech.  The guards would never enter their room.  Corrie couldn’t figure it out since they were always in every other aspect of these prisoners’ daily affairs.  Come to find out, it was the fleas!  They wouldn’t step foot in the barracks because they wanted to avoid the fleas.  And so God had shown Corrie how even the fleas had a role in bringing Hope and Truth and Saving Grace into this hellacious place.  

This book has taught me much and touched me deeply.  The miracles they witnessed and the perseverance and suffering for the Gospel is like nothing that I have ever heard or seen.  I am so thankful for their lives and their story.  They are fighting for joy and love and hope in the wake of insurmountable evil and suffering.  And what beauty was birthed from the darkness has rippled fierce and far. 

God has our family here for a reason.  This is His story.  We have been placed in the company of a group of people that are often lost and forgotten and discarded.  An amazing chance to bring good news of hope and salvation and redemption to hurting souls.  ” For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” -Luke 19:10.  He is a relentless pursuer of the rebel.  He is a Shepherd to the lost sheep who wander far from His love.  He is our great Redeemer.  He restores, renews, and heals bleeding hearts.

We need Him so desperately and sometimes it takes desperately horrible circumstances for us to finally see.  And even that is a great mercy.  For if He is all that our heart needs and longs for and nothing else on earth could ever satisfy, how good could He be if He let us go on our merry way thinking that the fleeting dying things in this life are IT?

Last weekend I went to see Rick by myself.  It’s been a very long time since we have had that much time together without any interruptions and just being able to enjoy each other and talk and laugh.  The large visiting room was crowded.  He only knew probably half of the inmates that were in there visiting with their family and friends.  He went around the room and shared story after story of these men and what he knew of their lives and families and hearts.  So much brokenness and sorrow.  Many of them have been in for years.  Serving out the remainder of a 20 year or more sentence in the camp.  You can only be in the camp if you have less than 10 years to serve, so many have been transferred from higher level security prisons to this place.  One of the things Rick was telling me is that they long for pen pals.  That is their only way of really communicating with the outside world.  Pen pals…hmmm…a seed of a thought planted.  

Their marriages are falling apart because they don’t have money to call their wives.  Their families can’t afford to travel to see them.  They have little to no contact with the outside world.  Their treatment inside the prison is of scum of the earth.  Hardening the hardened criminal.   What would it look like if there was some kind of ministry like Compassion where people are assigned a child who lives in poverty in other countries and you “sponsor” them and write to them and pray for them and encourage them.  What would it look like to start a prison ministry with something like that?  Just starting with pen pals.  Maybe putting a little money on their commissary so they can call their wives and their children.  To keep them connected to these relationships so that when they get out they will have some support and stability.  Because the government is not really interested in rehabilitation.  Their form of treatment seems to be fear and force.   

  

Rick was FINALLY seen by a doctor yesterday after over 2 weeks of waiting.  He still isn’t getting his meds.  His bad cholesterol is back up to super high levels.  They say their working on getting him the proper meds, so PLEASE PRAY for God’s swift hand in this.  He’s been sick with a cold and lost his voice.  But he has been settling into his routine and making friends and playing chess and cards and working out.  His first job was cleaning the front main lobby everyday where he whistled while he work.  But the warden thought his mopping skills were not up to par so he was fired.  He will now be working in the green house planting tomatoes and other various plants.  I like this job.  He’s not so sure.  I like that he will get to see new life spring from dark dirty earth brought on by water and light.  A sweet picture of redemption.

Rick is innovative and creative.  He’s been trying to create and organize some wellness and educational groups for the inmates that would stimulate minds and hearts and could only be positive, but has been denied all efforts.  Again, I am aghast at the lack of desire to help these people.  

I read Ann Voskamp’s book A thousand Gifts a couple of years ago and it was one of those eye opening heart changing books.  It was exactly about what Corrie and her sister are doing in their darkest hours.  Giving thanks.  And it is a discipline, especially in the overwhelming ugly circumstances, when it seems like there is nothing to be thankful for.  But as I began to start looking…I found that there were so many gifts that I had never even seen.  A whole new world of beauty and wonder all around that my thankless heart had been blind to.  And as I began to name the gifts and thank God for them, something changed.  My thoughts no longer tarried in the black tar sticky hopelessness that clings and destroys.  I felt free and full.  Full of gratefulness to my sweet Savior who loves me and gives good gifts.  Even in the dark painful pits.  I had to name them to see them.   I had to look to discover.  I had to hunt.  For beauty all around, laboring to see in the black bleak shattered spoils.  Sweet succulent splendor.  And joyful songs of praise sang my heart right out of despair.   A thirst soul-garden being watered every day.  And so much changed for me.  And although the pain is searing at times and I fall hard and get banged up….God’s truth and miracle of giving thanks and what it does to my heart, beckons.  And so the fleas that infested the bed and home of these sister prisoners who were there for helping save lives of the persecuted, reminded me again, that I can be thankful in all things….ALL things.  And God’s glory and grace will far surpass even the most horrific of circumstances.  

May we be able to live out 1Thessalonians 5:11-18 better because of it.  Because for Corrie and Betsie, it all became real right in their darkest hour.  Those ancient words on tattered pages burned right into the hearts of dying souls and changed everything.  Because the words are Living Hope.  Saving Grace.  Jesus.  

“…all new life comes out of dark places, and hasn’t it always been?  All new life labors out of the very bowels of darkness.  That fullest life itself dawns from nothing but Calvary darkness and tomb-cave black into the radiance of Easter morning.  It is suffering that has the realest possibility to bear down and deliver grace.  And grace that chooses to bear the cross of suffering overcomes that suffering.  Darkness transfigures into grace, empty transfigures into full.  God wastes nothing-‘makes everything work out according to his plan’ –Ephesians 1:11” –Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts