Crushed

The weight on my heart is not a frantic, anxious weight. It’s the weight of prayer.  Prayer for my dear friend who is suffering. She wades through deep waters in this season.  Crushed.

Crying out to You the hurt. The upheaval. The unknown.

And yet, even there she speaks of Your faithfulness. Even there, Your word sustains. Daily manna, she says. And ponders what the God of the impossible can do. 

“If we believe He is who He says He is, how can we not hope?”

Letting go

It’s not an easy path ahead for Your child, abandoned. But she clings to You with abandon. Letting go of the past in bits and pieces. Letting go of pleasing others. Letting go. Till it’s only You. 

She’s in the free fall of trusting for today. And tomorrow. Walking by faith, not by sight.

I pray for clarity and wisdom and turn to my morning Bible passage—thinking it will speak Your message to her situation. The assigned reading is Exodus 25-28 today. 

Oh. 

Crushed olives

I read all about the pattern You designed for the tabernacle. The pattern You expected them to follow. Curtains and colors and almond blossoms and gold and wood and bronze. 

The details swim on the page as my heart is caught in the question. How? How do I pray for my friend, Lord? 

I see the requirement of pure oil from crushed olives for the light of the lamp. A lamp tended by the priests from evening until morning before the Lord. The pure and the crushed fueling continual light in the sanctuary of Your Presence. (Exodus 27:20-21)

Crushed

This offering to You is herself—crushed. To go deeper into Your light of grace and hope.

Maybe that’s what I am supposed to see. The light in us burns brightest from the pure, the crushed offering. Holy light illuminating the dark.

I’m reading Jeanne Guyon’s Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ. Words written in the seventeenth century about abandonment. Abandoning all for Him. All. 

And we cannot go back after this crushing of the olives.  It is full surrender to the depths of our Lord. His mysterious ways. His illuminating truth.

Hungering only for Him. 

Nothing else matters.

The oil burns and glows in the dark of the dark.

“LORD, you are my lamp;
The LORD illuminates my darkness.”
2 Samuel 22:29

What about you?

Are you wading through deep waters? Have you struggled in the journey to wholly surrender to the Lord? How has the Lord sustained you and instructed you in suffering? In the dark?

Related posts: Job and the hope of Easter ; Waiting for the Lord ; Unexpected altar