Blessed be the Name of the Lord!

August 8, 2008

"My heart will choose to say, 'Blessed be the NAME!' " Joy and peace despite the most turmoil I can remember ever having. There is this confident assurance that All things work together for Good. Like my husband said last night, "God is orchestrating it all. Nations rise, kings fall. He does it all." God is sovereign. But I have total responsibility too...paradox time:) I can choose. Do I take this trust He provides and fill my heart thoughts with it and utterly trust Him or do I struggle and fight?
Oh the peace of picking His Will. Sometimes there is pain, deep pain. But even the pain can bring a Oneness of His Spirit communion with His suffering... and suffer He did. Not just physical pain....
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" It was spiritual pain. That amazing True Oneness being severed by our sins. Ps. 22 talks about the suffering Messiah and Jesus quotes it from the cross. He had know it was coming, this separation from the One, from the Father. We have never had that complete communion of Spirit that was present in their 'One'. "I and the Father are One, " Jesus told Philip in the book of John. That wall was put up by Jesus' willingness to take the spiritual disease that separates us from the Father upon Himself. This meant our separation was now His. But it could not hold Him!
His perfect Love, His willingness to suffer, and serve others, His perfect faith meant that the wall would fall. The veil of our separation would be and was torn, completely! No longer would separation have to win out. Jesus defeated that separation with His perfect Love.
When we feel that separation in our lives, from those we love, from God, from the person you were really created to be, understand He felt it too, only much more intensely!
He had perfect harmony and gave it up for us. Why?
To provide a Way for us to be in perfect communion with the One that Jesus spoke of to Philip.
I don't pretend to know what that complete communion will be like. But I've had tastes of it in this life and it is sweeter than can be imagined. I think my experiences were only baby steps or maybe ant steps towards the Perfection that awaits.
The marriage supper of the Lamb awaits me 'My heart will choose to say, 'Blessed be the Name!'
I will trust that this time of separation and heart rending turmoil which has been made joyous and peace filled, will bring more Oneness into Life. I will say with Job, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the Name of the Lord!"
Or as Jesus put it before his suffering, "if it be possible, let this cup pass away, but your Will and not my own." If there was any other way to restore this broken heart to Him, Jesus asked the Father, do not allow this to happen. But there was no other way, no other path to make my separated heart whole again. No other way to make the walls of separation fall. "it pleased the Lord to bruise Him ..." said the prophet Isaiah and so much more in his 53rd chapter.

Oh thank you Lord God for giving us glimpses of what our Messiah Jesus suffered for us. Thank you that the wall has been toppled, that You have defeated sin and separation by the Blood of the Perfect Risen Lamb, our Jesus, our Salvation, because of Him, we can be One with You forever.