Finding Rest
Adele Parkinson speaks of keys learned in deep personal trial.
‘The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. Yes I have a good inheritance.’ (Psalm 16:6)
Another way of saying this is, ‘my boundaries have fallen in pleasant places, and what has been given to me is good’. How easy this is to say when all in our life is going well. How easy is it to praise the Lord for all that He has given when our health, finances and our relationships are all thriving. But can we still thank the Lord for the boundaries in our lives when our hopes, dreams and expectations are not met?
The Power of the Word to Bring Freedom and Rest
When the boundaries in our life do not meet with our expectations this can be a source of grief and can rob us of our peace. As I look back on the early years of my marriage to my husband Bruce, I appreciate that he had his heart set on something far greater in our marriage than just seeing my hopes and dreams realized. When difficulties surfaced in our relationship, he encouraged me to join him and speak about our difficulties with leaders and appropriate friends in Christ. I was surprised by this. I was locked up to my own understanding of meeting and to my own dreams and fears to trust my fellows.
When my husband, Bruce, was diagnosed with terminal Myeloma, this began my journey of salvation and freedom. During the years that followed, as hidden dreams and expectations began to be stripped away, the words of life that so many shared with me have been both an anchor and rest to my soul. Encouragements both challenging and loving were spoken to me personally and others in the preaching and sharing of our church services – words such as, ‘stand at the door with your husband. Do not look out the window for another way.’ In difficult times I heard, ‘this is your life and this is your salvation’. ‘Why are you weeping?’ I embraced a fellowship of trust and found an anchor, a place of rest. (John 8:31). ’ I found the Lord and I can move on from weeping over lost dreams to weeping for others.
The Predestination of the Lord is Eternal
Our life was planned before the beginning of time and will continue beyond the end of time. Still what about the present? We strive to make our lives comfortable and we strive to achieve so that we do not have to think about death. The Bible speaks of comfort – the comfort of the Lord. (2 Cor 1:3) But how can God comfort us if we are already comfortable?
Psalm 23 is a well known psalm which is often given as words of comfort. ‘The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures’. In the same psalm it finishes with the verse ‘surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life’. These words can seem to be at odds with our real experiences when we are struggling with grief. And yet the mystery of the grace of God is that in the midst of the storm, in times of great darkness, God can meet us and bring us to a place of rest and acceptance in our life. He can enable us to be like Job and worship in the midst of great loss and He can help us to say, ‘the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places’, even when those places are not of our choosing.
