When All Around My Soul Gives Way
He then is all my hope and stay.
If we’re being honest…even with ourselves…the phrase above, all too often, is a glorified sound bite, rather than our perceived reality. Do you struggle to suffer with a heart stayed on Christ? When everything around you…everything you hold dear…seems to crumble and fade, does your heart easily transition into praise? Do you FEEL the anchor of your Living Hope when the crashing waves threaten to pull you under?
I confess that this is something I battle far too often. I really love this quote by Erika Allen:
“An anchor’s purpose is to keep a ship from succumbing to wind and waves. The ship will still be rocked by rough waters, but it will not be lost to the sea. Our hope in Jesus steadies and stablilizes our hearts in such a way that, though we are by no means immune to trouble and pain, we do not need to fear that they will be our undoing.”
Do you ever feel like you are being UNDONE by the troubles and heartaches you’re facing?
Again, that’s a big ol’ fat YEP from me.
The most commonly repeated phrase the hubs hears from me these days is, “ I am unwell.” Could be sickness-related, sure…but it might also be something that irritated me…something I find gross…something that is mildly disconcerting…feel free to use this phrase anytime you are mildly put out about anything. You’re welcome.
But truth-be-told, I have felt so undone many times over the past decade…but that’s even profoundly true, during the past 6 months. Have you ever had that feeling of “the hits just keep coming”? It’s not easy to be in the midst of the storms of life and still boldly say…
He then is all my hope and stay.
I read this somewhere recently, and it really resonated with all the things I’ve been wrestling with in my life lately.
“Suffering is often the context within which we cling to hope.”
I’d REALLY love to have this all wrapped up in a nice bow and under the tree by Christmas, if you know what I mean…but then I may not be inclined to CLING to the hope I have in Christ. Maybe God works in the trial after all. It’s almost like our human condition is not new to the Lord. The writer of Lamentations doesn’t pull any punches either:
“My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, ‘My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.’ Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him’.” Lamentations 3: 17-24
We must remind our souls of what is true, even when life seems to suggest otherwise.
Tim Keller told this story that he’d hear from Bryan Chapell, president of Covenant Seminary. I think it might be a helpful way to wrap up these thoughts, and I pray we can baby-step our way into making this true of our own hearts during the storms of our lives.
“Years ago, in his hometown, there were two brothers…two young boys…who were playing where they shouldn’t have been on the sand banks by the river. They ran up to the top of one of the sand mounds, and it began to sink. This is the reason they shouldn’t have been there. It was horribly dangerous. They were basically in a form of quicksand.
They began to sink, and the foundation…the ground…was way, way too far down for them to survive because they were about to go down farther than their height. That night, they didn’t come home. Nobody knew quite where they were. Everybody went out searching…the police, the neighbors, the parents. They came to the place and saw one of the two boys unconscious, but alive, because he had only sunk down so far; his head and shoulders were above the sand.
They started to dig him out and started to revive him, and he woke up. They said, ‘Where’s your brother,’ and he said, ‘I’m standing on his shoulders.’ At that moment, the foundation of that boy’s physical life was the sacrificial life, the sacrificial love, the sacrificial death, of his brother. See, Jesus Christ’s sacrificial death is literally our foundation, because as the hymn says:
His oath, His covenant, His blood, support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my Hope and Stay.
On Christ the solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”