Music (Melodious)

Poetry (Sonnet)

The Holy Spirit (Flaming tongues)

Here is your assignment, outstanding class, for the next week, for it is long. Take a question or two a day.

1. Learn the first and second verse of “Come Thou Fount.” Listen to Amy or suggest other renditions. Savor the lyrics and share your meditations on them.

2. Look at the power of music: How was music present at creation (Job 38:4-7)? What happened to music at the fall? (Romans 8:19-22) How did music appear again at the birth of Christ? And who will sing when Christ comes back? (Isaiah 55:12-13)

3. I want you to consciously sing more psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs throughout the day. Tell us what you are singing — how it is impacting you.

4. What did you learn in The God of All Comfort about the power of music?

5.  Poetry differs from prose in that it is meant to penetrate the heart, to tap into the right brain, and bring the love of God alive. You must read as a lover reads.  Meditate on the word pictures in Jeremiah 2:13, which is the scriptural basis for the phrase “Come Thou Fount”   Draw it, memorize it, linger over it. Tell us how it penetrates your heart and how to apply it.

6. Meditate on the word pictures in Psalm 91:1-10. How can they comfort you in your pain right now? Read as a lover reads.

7. What did you learn from The God of All Comfort about the power of poetry?

8.  Write down some of the phrases from the first two verses of “Come Thou Fount” and meditate on them. Find their scriptural basis if you can. If one leaps out at you, slow down — because those flaming tongues are quickening you — He’s talking to you. What do you see?

CAN’T WAIT TO HEAR FROM THIS WONDERFUL GROUP!

I’m off to Atlanta to speak and covet your prayers.

Samantha Crain

It’s February 1st. I always see the 1st of each month as a fresh start! This month we will have Valentine’s Day — and for those of you who have lost your husband, a bittersweet day. We will also, just a couple of days later, have Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent — a day when we identify with the sacrifice that Christ made for us, identify with His suffering, and prepare our hearts for the great celebration of His love and resurrection.

Many of you who are participating on this blog have lost someone you love dearly, perhaps even a spouse — and Valentine’s Day is a kind of night. Yet the promise of spring and the resurrection is surely a song in the night.

Years before my husband’s fatal diagnosis, he became a huge Charles Spurgeon fan.  Here was one of Steve’s favorite quotes from Spurgeon:

“The world has its night…man too, like the great world in which he lives, must have his night…nights of all kind which press upon our spirits and terrify our souls. But blessed be God, the Christian can say, ‘God gives me songs in the night.”

Here are your questions for the week.  Many are telling me they are amazed at the depth of the answers on this blog. I want to encourage you that you are not only speaking the truth to your own soul, but encouraging many others who at this point may either be hurting too much to write, or are the introverts who often sit silently in a Bible study.

Start listening and singing “Come Thou Fount.” We’ll dig into it on the next post.

1. If you have a copy of The God of All Comfort, did anything stand out to you in pages 51 to the top of 53?

2. Meditate on Psalm 77:4-6.  Describe the lament, then the resolve.

3. What do you think the phrase “songs in the night” means? Explain your answer.

4. Give an example from your own life, a recent one, if possible, of God giving you a song in the midst of your night. Make this concise and clear — for your song may be a song that floats into another’s night and gives them hope.

(On pages 41-43 of The God of All Comfort, I give examples of songs that came in my night.)

5. The phrase “songs in the night” also occurs in Job. Find it. Comment on it.

6. Are you dreading Valentine’s Day? Sometimes we can be proactive about hard days. How might you, if you are dreading it, be proactive? Pray and see if God gives you a plan. If so, share it.

7. Let’s each send a valentine with a note to someone who might be dreading it and be accountable to each other! Get it ready to mail by the end of this week! (I personally much prefer the real tangible kinds to the internet!) Or better yet, if you can afford it, send a book or flowers!

There really is power in praying the psalms, in praising, even when we don’t feel like it. Eugene Peterson says this kind of prayer interrupts our preoccupation with ourselves.  We are not alone in our prayers — First, as Renee so beautifully quoted from Narnia, Aslan can help us if we don’t ask, but “he sort of likes to be asked.” Begin by asking Him to help you slow down, meditate, and really see Psalm 30. Ask Him to kiss you. If a verse pops out, realize His Spirit is answering, and SLOW DOWN. Truly, I believe we are going to see some joy coming, hear about kisses received, about mourning turned into dancing. I’m praying for you to really do this, and for His Spirit to come and quicken you. I have a sense of expectancy.

Next, T. M. Moore has some helpful books on praying the psalms and he divides Psalm 30 into three parts — so let’s take it in these three parts and hear your reflections. It’s helpful if you mark them A, B, and C

A. Psalm 30:1-3  PRAISE GOD FOR HIS HEALING GRACE

When has God lifted you ouf of the depths? Healed you? Brought you up from the grave? Spared you from going down to the pit. Write your contemplations and praises.

B. Psalm 30:4-10 PRAISE THE LORD THAT HIS CHASTENING LEADS TO RENEWAL

When have you felt His chastening and responded so that renewal came? What promises give you hope here? What warning do you need to heed? What perspective do we have, on this side of the cross, that David did not?

C. Psalm 30:10-12 GIVE PRAISE AND THANKS TO GOD FOR HIS RENEWING GRACE

Word pictures are meant to be savored. Read as a lover reads. What do you see?

Thursday, December 16

Two months after Steve’s death

Annie feels like her life is “over”—and sometimes I do too. I understand those widows in pagan places who climb up on the funeral pyre and are burned with their husbands’ bodies. When I told Steve I wanted to go with him, he shook his head, “No, no—you must go on—the children, the people you touch. Go on because I can’t.”

I know, deep in my soul, that our lives are not our own. You have left us here for a reason. Yet I look out at the frozen ground, covered with snow, and think, “That’s how I feel.”

I told Liz Curtis Higgs (an author and friend) that’s how I felt. She e-mailed back: “Good, Beloved. He will slowly melt your ‘frozenness.’ And it is, after all, winter now. Beneath the frozen ground, new life is preparing to burst forth come spring. I feel certain that’s what will happen with you as well.”

In Narnia, the land that C. S. Lewis created, it was always winter and never Christmas—that is, until Aslan appeared. Then the ice began to thaw, yellow crocuses began to poke their heads up through the snow, and the snow began to fall in great clumps from the trees and melt into the ground. Aslan’s enemy, the White Witch, who traveled by sleigh, was stopped in her tracks.

“This is no thaw,” said the dwarf, suddenly stopping. “This is Spring. What are we to do? Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you! This is Aslan’s doing.”

How can we get through the frozen tundra of grief to spring?

Only one way. Aslan—Jesus—must come.

And He will. He hears the groaning of His people and His heart is moved. He cares, more than a mother cares for her fretful baby, and He has the truth to calm our fretful souls.

QUESTIONS:

1. Comments or reflections on the above reading?

2. Find evidence in Scripture, either from historical incidents, or from the psalms, that God hears the cries of His people and cares. (You can do a word hunt by going to Biblegateway.com and typing in words like cries, groanings, sorrows — and see what you find.) Write down the phrases that touch your heart.

3. Often when you are in the midst of a spiritual winter, as many of you are, you cannot imagine that spring will come — that Aslan will come. What I want you to do is look back to a different winter, when spring did come, when Jesus did come, and write down what you remember.

4. Memorize the first verse of Be Still My Soul and share your reflections on it.

It’s in the back of The God of All Comfort or you can google it.

5. For Narnia fans, share a comforting word picture of Aslan.

6.  Meditate on Psalm 30. Taste it. Savor it. When a verse leaps out at you, The Spirit is speaking. Go slower. Savor. Memorize. Then (and only then) tell us what you see.

Because this was a pivotal moment in my grief journey, I’m going to share this excerpt from The God of All Comfort.

*********************************************************************

On what would have been our fortieth anniversary, I sobbed a good part of the day. I was packing up the house to move from a home of sweet memories that I did not want to leave. The littlest things, like finding Steve’s white surgery coat with his initials, SGB, on the pocket could cause me to crumble.

When I went to bed that night, I was fretful. When you are suffering deeply, you think the regular frustrations of life might call a truce for a while, but, of course, they don’t. The toilet still overflows, the bills still pour in, and people—yes, even Christians!—can be difficult. Though I tried to sleep, anxieties multiplied, leaping over my pillow like bleating sheep.

I turned over on my side, looking at the vacant place where Steve used to be. Oh, my darling—how could this have happened to us?

Steve and I used to call each other “co-dependent insomniacs.” If one of us awoke in the night, he (or she) would whisper to the other: “Are you awake?” When it was me, I knew that even if Steve was asleep, he would rouse to keep me company. If I was worried about something, he would listen to me pour out my heart, stroking my back, empathizing with his deep masculine voice, his calming ways.

Sometimes he would help me laugh about a trouble. Other times, when he knew there was no humor in a situation, he’d simply pray over me and hold me. If sleep still eluded me, he’d start quoting our favorite nursery rhyme:

Winkin’, Blinkin’, and Nod, one night sailed off in a wooden shoe;
sailed off on a river of crystal light into a sea of dew…

Safe in Steve’s arms, our bed became a wooden shoe sailing off into a sea of dew—and I was lulled to sleep.

But Steve was not there. His side of the bed was achingly empty.

All of us have times of feeling alone, misunderstood, or betrayed. So often David felt that way and cried out: “How long, O Lord, how long?…All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.”

My cry that sleepless night was not nearly as eloquent as David’s. I simply sobbed: Help me, help me, help me, God! I knew I needed God to be my Comforter, my Counselor, and my Husband—but that understanding exploded into a question: “But how do I connect with Someone who is not flesh and blood?” When I couldn’t immediately sense God’s presence, I curled up in the middle of our king-sized bed and wept.

Without even realizing it, I had prayed a prayer of lamentation. While I was sobbing, curled in a fetal position, a scene from my past came to my mind: I was twenty-one, trying to calm our firstborn in the middle of the night. He would awaken, hungry and howling. Though I would run to him and lift him from his crib, unbuttoning my nightgown as we settled in the rocker, he was too fretful to latch onto my breast. He would root about, but if he didn’t find me in two seconds, he would rear back, his little face red and contorted, his fists flailing. If I stroked his cheek, like the nurse in the hospital had told me to do, trying to coax him to turn toward me, he would erupt in anger, bursting into a horrific wail, one that I knew carried through our thin apartment walls. A mother’s breasts respond to her baby’s cry and my milk let down, ready for my baby—but his fretful state kept him from connecting with me. I kept thinking, I’m right here, I’m right here! A very long ten minutes later, he’d finally find me and nurse greedily. His perspiring little face would relax, his eyes closing at half-mast in contentment. I would think, “Oh my, Pumpkin—what was all that about? I was right here.”

Suddenly, I identified. I was that baby, concentrating more on my distress than on the One who was right there. I sensed the Lord saying: Dee, I am right here. I am right here.

I stopped my fretting and fussing and was still. The chorus from an old hymn came to me, one I’d been listening to in a contemporary version, and I began to sing it softly, over and over again. In essence, it is the repeated cry of the psalms of lamentation:

I need Thee, O I need Thee…

Every hour I need Thee,

O bless me now, My Savior, I come to Thee.

Gradually, my soul began to calm, my body began to relax, and my eyes went to half-mast…

When I woke the next morning, much more rested, I opened my Bible to pray through a psalm, as was, thank God, already my habit. My psalm that morning “happened” to be Psalm 131. When I read it I knew that God was “kissing me.” (“A kiss from the King” according to Rabbinic tradition, is a living word from God.) God’s living word was confirming to me exactly what I had experienced from His Spirit the night before.

I have stilled and quieted my soul;

Like a weaned child with its mother,

Like a weaned child is my soul within me.

Psalm 131:2

Psalm 131 is one I already knew by heart from listening to it as a song. It was so very clear by this point that God was entering into dialogue with me, that I slowed down to meditate on the words I’d already memorized.

Now I’m going to ask you, my contemplative sisters, to meditate and reflect on this psalm. I’m not going to  have a lot of internet access in the next week, but will check in when I can.  I’m going to suggest a question a day for the next week. This psalm is crucial. It’s only three verses long and would be so good for you to memorize.

This weekend:

1. After reading my story, comment: How does praying the psalms allow God to enter into dialogue with you, instead of having just a one way conversation? How did this happen with me? Has it yet for you?

Monday

2. This can happen for you too — and the key is in meditating on, praying through, and memorizing the psalm (perhaps with the help of music.) Read the psalm slowly, meditatively. If you have Amy’s version of it, begin to memorize it (you can hear it on that Midday Connection program by listening online– it’s in the first 15 minutes of January 14th’s program) Write down any phrases that strike you, for the Spirit may be speaking to you.

Tuesday:

3. Meditate on verse 1. With the help of His Spirit, other translations, and cross references — why do you think the psalmist says, “My heart is not proud?” “I will not concern myself with great matters nor with things too profound for me.” (NKJV)

Wednesday

4. What difficulties are you going through right now that are hard to understand? What do you learn from the above? Write down your resolve, rephrasing verse 1.

Thursday

5. A weaned child was actually an older child weaned from the breast to a cup (something that happened when children were three or older in biblical times — and was very traumatic to them - but one day they were content without the breast) — but we may better be able to relate to a fretful baby who finally calms. What do you learn from this metaphor — from comparing your anxious soul to a fretful baby? Memorize verse 2.

Friday

6. What instruction can you glean from verse 2 for you in your situation — or for you when you will go through future storms? Can you do this now?

Saturday

7. This may not seem like a classic lament, but it is, because actually Psalm 130 and Psalm 131 should go together. Looking at these together, find:

A. The cry of lament (Psalm 130:1-2)

B. The questions, the dialogue, the remembering of God’s mercies  (Psalm 130:3-6)

C. The resolve (Psalm 131)

Praying for you as you contemplate!

Finish memorizing Psalm 131 by memorizing verse 3

FINALLY — LET’S HEAR SOME WAYS GOD MINISTERED TO YOU THROUGH THIS — WOULD LOVE TO HEAR SOME SENTENCES FROM OUR SILENT SISTERS TOO!

8. How did God speak to you through this exercise? Would love to hear from silent sisters!

1. The lament — the honest complaint or cry of your sorrowing fearful heart

2. Remembering God’s goodness in the past. The Spirit brings to the psalmists remembrance God’s faithfulness to Israel or to him as an individual. He also brings to his remembrance God’s character. The Spirit does not explain the why of the circumstances, but the heart of God.

3. The prayer, based now on faith in God, or the resolve, based on faith in God.

Here are the questions:

1. Find these three parts in Psalm 3. Which verses are for each?

2. My prayer journal entries in the close of chapter 1 of The God of All Comfort basically shows just Part I of the lament. Find a few examples.

3. Now — you do Part I. Pour out your sorrowing or fearful heart. Do it for God — if writing here won’t change your cry, then write it here. If you are not in a time of pain, pray for those who are. Right now, you could pray for earthquake victims in Haiti.

4. Now, and this is crucial: Warm your heart at the fire of God’s love by meditating on Part II, the part where the psalmist remembers things about God. If one of the verses sparks something in you, then God has spoken to you — and stay there, meditating, warming yourself, letting your heart catch fire.

I’m expecting to see God move among you! For some of you He will be silent, as He is in some Psalms of lament, but usually He gives you enough you can resolve, at least, to hold on.

5. Write your request, or  resolve, if you can, as in Part III.

I’m counting on some of you to do this very clearly as a model for all of us. Don’t hurry. Meditation takes time. Your heart may not be quickened at all, or it may not be quickened until the end of the week — but keep meditating, asking God to dialogue with You. You see prayer is, in part, pouring out your heart — but the psalms allow it to be a two way conversation — a dialogue.

How different from the dialogue at the close of the book of Job.

So if God knows what He is doing, if He has not lost control, why do bad things happen to good people? Why does a godly man like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who had the courage to take a stand against Hitler, die naked by hanging when victory is just about to be announced? He was but thirty-nine. Why are there martyrs at all?

Here are the questions for your next quiet times.

1. According to Job 38, what are some of the reasons we should respect that God knows what He is doing?

2. Sometimes God does deliver — and sometimes He does not. What do you learn from Hebrews 11:30-40?

3. What are the flaws in Rabbi Kushner’s argument?

4. What do you learn from other materials about the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer? If any of you have read his books, watched documentaries on his life, or have something encouraging about him to share — please do!

5.  Bonhoeffer certainly left a legacy. His book, The Cost of Discipleship, has transformed so many lives. Certainly his model as well. His book on the Psalms is amazing, and has impacted me. Here is a quote from Bonhoeffer that I’d like you to meditate and comment on, because the next things we are going to do, in three days, in learn how to start praying the psalms.

It is a dangerous error, certainly very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself. …Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one’s heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty.

…If we wish to pray with confidence and gladness, then the words of Holy Scripture will have to be the solid basis of our prayer. For here we know that Jesus Christ, the Word of God, teaches us to pray. The words which come from God become, then, the steps on which we find our way to God.

Now there is in the Holy Scriptures a book which is distinguished from all books of the Bible by the fact that is contains only prayers. The book is the Psalms.

Saved alone. What shall I do?

He came on the next ship, but asked the captain to stop at the place his four little girls drowned. After looking into those deep dark waters, he went back to his stateroom and penned: It is Well With My Soul.

Spafford has been called a contemporary Job, and he was.  Most of us know this story — but there is more. He was a wealthy Chicagoan who loved the Lord deeply — he was extremely active, at risk to himself in the anti-slavery movement. He was a great friend and supporter of D. L.  Moody. Like Job, his first tragedy was loss of property, for Spafford lost tremendous wealth in the great Chicago fire. After the fire, the family decided to go to a Moody crusade in Europe, but Spafford was detained and sent his family ahead. It was then, like Job, that he lost all of his children.  Spafford, like Job, trusted God and clung to Him.

After this tragedy, Spafford and his wife were blessed with a son — a son who died at the age of four.  (If you happen to be a Netflix member, I heartily recommend renting the documentary on five songs called “Amazing Grace” — not the movie about William Wilberforce, though it has the same title — but a documentary on five songs, including It Is Well With My Soul.)

Please memorize all of It Is Well With My Soul, quieting yourself in the presence of God with it each morning, before you study.

Here are your questions to ponder for January 7, 8, and 9:

1. Looking at the first chapter of Job, what parallels do you see between Job and Horatio?

2.  Ponder verse 1 of It Is Well With My Soul. What new thoughts do you have, knowing the Spafford story?

3. According to the first chapter of Job, what was the reason that Job suffered? What thoughts or questions do you have about this?

4. Why did Satan think Job served God? What does loss reveal about our hearts?

5. Ponder the second verse of It Is Well With My Soul.  Do you think Satan may have also been behind Horatio’s tragedies? Why or why not?

6. What does Satan hope will happen to the Christian who suffers loss? What truths, according to the 2nd and 3rd verses of It Is Well With My Soul allowed Horatio to overcome Satan?

7. How can you apply this to your storm right now — or to storms in the future?

Finally — I want to issue a personal invitation to anyone in the Chicago area to sign up and come to the live event next Thursday at Moody.  I’ll be there and would love to meet any bloggers. Amy Shreve will be there, playing “It is Well With My Soul” on her harp as well as other great songs. I realize most of you cannot, though we covet your prayers, and hope you’ll listen online or on the radio! You can connect to the Midday site through my homepage.

I’m praying for you as you study! Thanks for praying for each other as well. He is with us.

Then I came home to an e-mail that one of my dearest friends has cancer spread throughout her body.

Author William Brown says, “The psalms capture, better than any other corpus of Scripture, the bi-polar life of faith.”

First, in your quiet times in the next three days, connect with God.  Look carefully at the song, the book, and the Scriptures. When you are ready, let’s hear your thoughtful reflections on the first three questions — and then, by Tuesday, let’s see if we are ready to go on to the rest of the questions. Take your time and ask God to help you to see.

Sing the first verse of “It is Well with My Soul” by heart and let it talk to your soul about trusting in sunshine and in storms. Begin memorizing the second verse.

If you have The God of All Comfort, read pages 12 through 14 and answer:

1. What did Philip Yancey have to learn about the psalms before he could use them correctly? (For those of you who don’t have the book, I trust your sisters will articulate this for you!)

2. Finish reading Psalm 18. How did God come to the rescue of the psalmist? What word pictures penetrate your heart?

3. Share a time when God came to your rescue — the sun came out, and you wanted to dance and sing!

4. Now read Psalm 88.  How does this psalm end? This is where some of you are right now. The sun has not come out — and you wonder how you are going to make it.  What word pictures penetrate your heart from Psalm 88?

5. Can you think of a time when Jesus might have felt like this?

6. What do you think about talking to God as the psalmist did in this psalm?

7. When we honestly express fear or despair to the Lord, is He angry? Base your answer on what you see in Scripture.  What  guidelines do you see for speaking to the Lord in Scripture? Think about what made Jesus angry repeatedly in the New Testament. (This is a challenging question, so cry out to a holy God for wisdom. (I will share — but want to hear from you first!

8. In The God of All Comfort, on page 14, I share my testimony on what I learned through the psalms. What was it? Have you experienced this?

The psalmist feels like he's drowning

New Year’s Day 2010 and we’re beginning our study on The God of All Comfort. A few preliminary guidelines:

It is most important you connect with God — and then with us. To help you connect with Him, get a Bible, a notebook (or you may want to journal on a document on your computer) and a quiet place.

Begin by stilling your heart before Him. You may want to sing worship songs. Two that would be good for this weekend are the first verse to It Is Well With My Soul and, if you know it, the praise chorus based on Psalm 18:1-2 (I will Call upon the Lord)

Confess your sins. Pray for yourself and the others doing this study to be “quickened” by the Spirit.

Then begin the study. I’ve provided exercises to take you through the weekend — you may want to take two or three a day. If you don’t have the book The God of All Comfort there will be some questions you may need to skip.

Finally, and this may happen any time during the weekend, but perhaps not until tomorrow or Sunday, connect with us by sharing an insight He gave you, a question you have, or a praise. Read over your sisters’ responses and respond, as you feel led.

1. Meditate on Psalm 18:1-6. What images does the psalmist use in verses 4 and 5 to convey his distress? Can you identify for yourself personally or someone you love?

2. In The God of All Comfort, on the opening two pages, how do my journal entries reflect the feeling of Psalm 18:4-5?

What thoughts do you have about these entries?

3. Behind the psalmist in all the psalms of lament, if you look hard enough, you can see Jesus. How do you see Jesus in Psalm 18:1-6?

4. What does it mean to you that Jesus understands this kind of engulfing fear and pain?

5. I spoke at a retreat right after I learned of my husband’s cancer and Kim Hill led us in “It Is Well With My Soul.” I was crying as I sang it and had the fleeting thought of trying to be a better witness. Why was that a false thought?

6. Memorize the first verse of It Is Well With My Soul and write down any reflections on it.

7. Is there a key insight, question, or reflection you’d like to share with others on the blog? Then please do!

8. Respond to your sisters’ thoughts.