Music has been a healing balm in our lives. Stress is relieved through the piano keys. Our family comes together in three-part harmony in car drives regularly. God moves us to healing and wholeness as we surrender in worship. We just spent the weekend enjoying many artists at Heavenfest 2015, so the power of lyrics and worship and style are reverberating. The next few posts will cover songs and my reflections about them at the time they were lifelines. Raw, real, powerful.
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At the foot of the cross
Where grace and suffering meet
You have shown me Your love
Through the judgment You received
And You've won my heart
Yes You've won my heart
Now I can
Trade these ashes in for beauty
And wear forgiveness like a crown
Coming to kiss the feet of mercy
I lay every burden down
At the foot of the cross
At the foot of the cross
Where I am made complete
You have given me life
Through the death You bore for me
I'm laying every burden down
I'm laying every burden down
~ Kathryn Scott
More than seven months after the sinkhole threatened, I’m still alive, still breathing in and out, still pushing my way through the trail of filth and the tangled emotions and torn up relationships. My daughters are adjusting to life without their father present and that “safety” has allowed them to begin to release the fear, the pain, the questions, and the strain. My burdens are many, and the ashes of my life are still clearly visible, the charred piles, smoldering, faint reminders of the life I once lived.
Back in November (2004) during a prophetic prayer time that I went to, Isaiah 61:1-3 rose to my awareness as a hopeful verse on which to cling.
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD ... has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion -- to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.
I first thought he was calling me in this to bind, proclaim, and set free others through my journey. That may still be true, but I believe in this journey he wants to turn my ashes into beauty, to take my burdens and give me gladness and praise. He just may want me to be an oak of righteousness for his display of splendor.
These thoughts mixed with ponderings of hope being not in the dying of Christ but in his resurrection, spur me on to the business of being, setting aside the doing that feels necessary in this life. I choose to live not in bitterness and anger seeking revenge, but rather at the foot of the cross, looking on his death (and allowing mine with him) with my focus firmly set, though, on his resurrection. My Jesus is one who brings order out of chaos and miraculous life out of the dead and decaying ... may that hope carry me!
Dear Jesus,
Thank you for the gift of songs;
for your timing in their entry into my being;
for the revelation of yourself to water with life my tired and weary soul.
Blessed be your name, for you are here in the midst of it all.
I love you.
February 21, 2005