J M Ellison

I want to teach Bible at a college-level.  I know a list of things that I could be doing to help prepare for that role.  I am not doing all of them.  I am doing some of them.  I’m not ready to teach yet but I’m pretty sure finding  a job is going to be about being in the right place at the right time. So far in life, every time I’ve been in the right place at the right time, it’s been unplanned, so I’m not sure there’s a point in attempting to orchestrate my fate.  I will keep going to class and trying to earn my degree(s).  I will keep being actively involved in ministry. I will keep getting to know the Lord better.  I’ll worry about the other things later.

come ye sinners, poor and needy, weak and wounded, sick and sore,
Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pity love and power.
come ye thirsty…
and if you tarry until you’re better, you will never come at all

Come to me, all you who are weary and cary heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you.  Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke fits perfectly, and the burden I give you is light.

I don’t suppose Jesus would have invited weary people if he hadn’t wanted them to come.  I’ve been too ashamed to come. Too ashamed for being weary.  Too afraid of “using” God for a spiritual fix. Too afraid that I will come for just long enough to feel better and then I will run off again until I’m desperate again. I should wait to come until I’m coming for the “right reasons.”

When I immerse myself in learning about a specific addiction, or am impacted by sin in someone else’s life, I see the similarities between their life and mine and I wonder why I haven’t made the choices that they have made and then begin to fear I will. For example, when a dear friend got divorced I began analyzing all of my relationships fearful that I would move toward having an affair without realizing it.  When I worked at Shepherd’s Door I became keenly aware of how much my past had in common with many of our residents.  With such similar childhoods, why had I not walked the road they walked that led them to homelessness and addiction?  The list goes on. Rather than each fear replacing the one before it, they are piled on top of each other like the rubble of a collapsed apartment building.

I don’t know what kept me away from many of the addictions that I am so afraid of.  I know that most people don’t see the thing coming that ends of crippling them and this frightens me more.  The small, seemingly inconsequential choices are made until one day we looked around to find that we are very far from where we thought we were and where we want to be. 

Rather than resting in the peace and freedom that is mine, I have found a way to live bound in fear of what I might be blind to.  I obsess about what might happen and wonder what choices I’m making now that will lead me down a path I don’t realize I’m traveling.

I need to chill.  I might be blind to a lot of things but I also might not be. Vigilance is good; sin is sneaky and we need to watch out for it.  Hyper-vigilance over the long-haul, however, is unhealthy and actually clouds our judgment and weakens our senses. I need to let go of some of these layers of fear.  I need to stop acting like  I’m recovering from an addiction I never had.  I need to trust that God will let me know if there’s something in my life that I need to be aware of.

Enjoy my relatively unedited thoughts…

Hear me, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. I am definitely feeling spiritually and emotionally poor and needy today.

Guard my life, for I am faithful to you; save your servant who trusts in you. I’m not really concerned about my life, just my sanity so I don’t always know how to interact with these requests, I’d like to apply them directly to me, even though they don’t fit.

You are my God; have mercy on me, Lord, for I call to you all day long.

Bring  joy to your servant, Lord, for I put my trust in you. I really like that the psalmist asks God to bring him joy.  Does this happen by a gift of joy or by changing something (either circumstantial or internal) that results in joy?  Either way, I ask the Lord, to bring me joy.

You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you. Yes, he is.

Hear my prayer, LORD; listen to my cry for mercy.

When I am in distress, I call to you, because you answer me. This is indeed why I call, I believe that he will answer me.  I am in distress, tired & weary.  I believe that if I call he will answer.  I just wish I better understood how. I’d rather have some intense one-on-one conversation with God then have him subtly adjust things that I’m unaware of.  I’m tired of attributing things to God that I think were probably done by him, rather than having signs and wonders.  Does God not give them to me because I don’t expect him to or because he doesn’t want to? Regardless, I do believe he will answer.  I just wish I could clearly point to the answer and say, “See, that’s it!”

Among the gods there is non like you, Lord; no deeds can compare with yours. So true, both biblically and in the life of my family and in the lives of those I love.

All the nations you have made will come and worship before you. Lord; they will bring glory to your name.

For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God.

Teach me you way. LORD, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. I NEED this.  I need to learn the Lord’s ways.  I want an undivided heart.  My heart feels very divided right now, I want one heart that seeks one thing: God. I’m so scared about how he might answer this one…

I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever.

For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths, from the realm of the dead. What a good reminder that I am not where I was no where I could be. I have been delivered from the depths, from the realm of the dead, both in this life and the life to come. I am tired tonight, but not dead, in any manor of speaking.

Arrogant foes are attacking me, O God’ a band of ruthless people seeks my life– they have no regard for you.

But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness. I LOVE this description of God–compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.  I love that this is how he chooses to describe himself and that it is how I’m actually coming to see him.  He’s so much better than the God I had created in my head. I want to be like this God.  I need to spend more time with him.

Turn to me and have mercy on me; show your strength in behalf of your servant and save the son of a woman who served you before me. Is he saying that his mom served the Lord?  I feel like I’ve never read this verse before.

Give me a sign of your goodness, that my enemies may see it and be put to shame, for you, LORD, have helped me and comforted me. Funny, with my complaining about signs earlier, that the psalmist asks for signs so that his enemies will be put to shame, not to make himself feel better. Still, a sign of some sort would be nice (I feel like an ungrateful whiny child. I would love a sign, some obvious supernatural interaction, still, I will serve God if he doesn’t give me what I want. Good call, huh?  Why do I want a sign…I guess I want hope, encouragement, something that can be trusted because it’s straight from the Lord.

“Come, all you who are thirsty,

Come to the waters;

And you who have no money,

Come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk,

Without money and without cost.

Why spend money on what is not bread,

And your labor on what does not satisfy?

Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,

And you will delight in the richest of fare.”

Isaiah 55:1-3 is one of my favorite passages of Scripture ever.  It reminds me of so many good things:

1) God wants us to have milk, wine, and bread and is actively inviting us to these things

2) God provides a way for us to have those things that is afordable

3) I tend to spend my money on things that do not satisfy rather than what God provides that does satisfy.

It’s simple and it’s good. Today I an newly aware of a God who calls and invites me to ”Come!” I am hungry for milk, wine, and bread. I’m tired of that which does not satisfy: cheap frozen dinners, refined sugars and the like. I want fresh, good simple food. 

The words of this song have been very powerful in my life this week.  I resonate with her heavy burden along with her burden to continue.  I love the stories of the great saints who have gone before, those in the Bible, famous Christians in recent history and the many unnamed people who are caring the gospel to the world.  Ultimately the same gospel that I preach on this campus in my daily interaction with students is the gospel that Christ died for, the gospel that fuels those fighting against human trafficking, and the gospel that many have determined is worth dying for.  I am part of something so much bigger than myself. I can’t help but be part of this story.  Christ’s love compels me.  My life is hidden in His.

When the Saints by Sara Groves

Lord I have a heavy burden of all I’ve seen and know
It’s more than I can handle
But your word is burning like a fire shut up in my bones
and I cannot let it go
And when I’m weary and overwrought
with so many battles left unfought

I think of Paul and Silas in the prison yard
I hear their song of freedom rising to the stars
And when the Saints go marching in
I want to be one of them

Lord it’s all that I can’t carry and cannot leave behind
it often overwhelms me
but when I think of all who’ve gone before and lived the faithful life
their courage compels me
And when I’m weary and overwrought
with so many battles left unfought

I think of Paul and Silas in the prison yard
I hear their song of freedom rising to the stars
I see the shepherd Moses in the Pharaoh’s court
I hear his call for freedom for the people of the Lord

And when the Saints go marching in
I want to be one of them
And when the Saints go marching in
I want to be one of them

I see the long quiet walk along the Underground Railroad
I see the slave awakening to the value of her soul

I see the young missionary and the angry spear
I see his family returning with no trace of fear

I see the long hard shadows of Calcutta nights
I see the sisters standing by the dying man’s side

I see the young girl huddled on the brothel floor
I see the man with a passion come and kicking down the door

I see the man of sorrows and his long troubled road
I see the world on his shoulders and my easy load

And when the Saints go marching in
I want to be one of them
and when the Saints go marching in
I want to be one of them

http://www.saragroves.com/store/tellmewhatyouknow/lyrics/whenthesaints/

My mom will likely have to go through chemo again. She’s had 4 different types of cancer in the last 7 years. She’s a statistical oddity and it never seems to end.  This last call indicated that the doctors suspect that her most recent bout with breast cancer was an exceptionally dangerous quick replicating recurrence of her breast cancer from 4 years ago.  Because they can’t do any tests to prove this, we don’t know that she is threatened by the disease, but we do know that they want to treat her as though she is. 

These calls always knock the wind out of me.  The thought of my mom being alone in this makes it worse.  My dad passed away in March, during the concluding week of her radiation of breast cancer #2 and I hate the thought of her not having him to be with her through this.  32 years and 4 cancers,1 kidney disease, 1 liver disease, diabetes, Hep C, and who knows how many other diseases the two of them walked through together.  And now she is alone.  No matter how good her support network is, it does not contain him. And that feels awful.

I hurt.  For myself and for my mom.  This is not going to be fun and it’s been a rough year already. As I was sitting in this place, I heard a song on the radio.  It is the song of the weary sheep.

-Shepherd, by Todd Agnew

I am weary.  My mom must be wearier. What struck me in the song is that the sheep aren’t asking for him to fix things, they’re asking for him to speak.  I think my mom and I would ask the same thing.  Not to be alone in this, to hear the voice of God speaking, letting us know that we’re not alone and reminding us of what we know: God is. God loves.  God is with us.