gratitude and the moment and pain

So I've been meditating on Phil 4:4-7 and Eph 3:17-20. Don't feel like typing them out so go read them!! ;) "Power to grasp" the magnitude of God's love that "surpasses knowledge". And having peace that "transcends all understanding". He really is able to do "immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine." Familiar verses to many of us, but when I roll them around on my tongue and chew them over and over again, their flavor is only enhanced and heightened and magnified. I've also been reading two books that, as my friend says, are "transformative." One is Ann Voskamp's 1000 Gifts. I finished that one last week and just started Present Perfect by Gregory Boyd. I have lots to write, but little boys are here with swords and laundry is calling my name. But here are a couple of quotes: (the basis of Boyd's book) - "I realized that my trivial, self-centered mental chatter about the past and the future - like a dark cloud blocking the sun - had kept me from seeing the glroy of God that surrounded me every second of every day. Never before had I realized the extent to which our focus determines what we experience - and do not experience - in any given moment. Never before had I seen how being absorbed in the past or future causes us to miss the wonder of the present. This realization began to move me toward what I've since come to believe is the most fundamental truth a person can ever embrace, and it's the truth this book is all about.

The present moment is all that is real.

The past is gone. The future is not yet. We remember the past and anticipate the future, but we always do so in the present. Reality is always now. And the single most important aspect of of reality is that God is present in it every moment."

So I've marked up Voskamp's book so much I could fill post after post with quotes, but in light of what I just read in Boyd's book about focusing on God in every moment, it just takes what Voskamp expresses about deep truths concerning gratitude even deeper. We are in the middle of a couple of dark trials right now, the ones that make you look up to heaven and wonder how you got here. Thankful for these books that have reminded me to turn my eyes onto the King, the Lover, I AM and away from myself in the middle of seemingly hopeless circumstances. So Ann talks about remembering what God has done (seems contradictory to living in the present moment, but it's not actually because it causes you to remember that He is alive in your current moment). Anyway! Here is one of many encouraging quotes from 1000 gifts: "Every time fear freezes and worry writhes, every time i surrender to stress, aren't I advertising the unreliability of God? That I really don't believe? But if I'm grateful to the Bridge Builder for the crossing of a million strong bridges, thankful for a million faithful moments, my life speaks my beliefs and I trust Him again....It's only when you live the prayer of thanksgiving that you live the power of trusting God." Okay, here's another that has helped me see more clearly in this dark season of trial: "God holds us in the untamed moments too....Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father's heart."

And when the script written for us is certainly not the one we would've chosen, I guess certain expectations are shattered and the story we've constructed in our minds is not the one we would have told. So here's another quote: "Pride, mine - that beast that pulls on the mask of anger - this is what snaps this hand shut, crushes joy. When I would read Henry Ward Beecher's words later, I'd take it for my own story, so familiar his thoughts: 'Pride slays thanksgiving...A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.' Dare I ask what I think I deserve? A life of material comfort? A life free of all trials, all hardship, all suffering? A life with no discomfort, no inconveniences? Are there times that a sense of entitlement - expectations - is what inflates self, detonates anger, offends God, extinguishes joy? And what do I really deserve? Thankfully, God never gives what is deserved....Proudly refusing to accept this moment, dismissing it as no gift at all, I refuse God. I reject God. Why is this eucharisteo always so hard?"

So, hope is not snuffed out as I try to remember that God could not be experienced in this moment in this way if not for this trial. Elisabeth Elliot always said that "all our trials are custom-made." Thankful for these trials. Thankful for the darkness in which God is taking me into His arms and reminding me of who He is and where He is. And just going through the pain - instead of trying to get the epidural - leads us to a joy that could have been birthed no other way. Thank you, good, good, good God.