Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The faithfulness of God

Straight from my dreams comes this:

I retired from both an industry, but from friendships. We all go on. We pour out our miseries, God just hears a melody. We leave and we are left but never by God. Never.

Ultimately, therefore, God is our only friend. Beyond our spouse, our children, the people we spend our time with in our "careers" and on and on. God is always there. Beautiful is the mess we are, God sees.

I cry out and God hears, and to him my cry is more wonderful that the most wonderful of choirs because it is me hitting bottom and reaching up. It is me finally cutting through the mess into the truth.

God is faithful. To the end. To the very end. We can trust the un-seeable. Ain't that a kick?

Look at what the Word says....

The Lord passed in front of Moses, calling out,“Yahweh! The Lord!The God of compassion and mercy!I am slow to angerand filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.

In the Psalms we read:

The Lord leads with unfailing love and faithfulnessall who keep his covenant and obey his demands.

Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens;your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.

For your unfailing love is as high as the heavens.Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

I will sing of the Lord’s unfailing love forever!Young and old will hear of your faithfulness.


I think the idea is plain. Whenever those around me falter and fail and I'm beaten to the ground by the very idea of failed friendship (my friendship to others and others to me), God is there, faithful to the end.

Songwriter Rich Mullins said of this: "There's people been friendly, but they could never be your friend." I think the reason this is (apart from Rich and I being depressed at times) goes to to the heart of the definition of friendship.

Friend: a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.
Friend: a person who gives assistance; patron; supporter.

Don't know about you, but I'm looking for something deeper that a simple attachment. Band-aids are attached. Sutures are deep. I want to be sewn up when I am cut deeply.

Jesus said of friends: I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.

It was the act of confiding in that brought the disciples to friendship with Jesus. In other words, it was the act of sharing. It was running headlong into the walls of our own making and the making of a cold, cold world, and then having someone who will listen when we wail in pain.

I have those who I share with: a Doug Schoffner in Ohio, a Danny Joyce in Madisonville, a Trey Iles in Slidell. The list is so very short, and I know it is a small number perhaps. But as I approach gently but surely the age of my football number in high school (I was a guard, which tells you much), it is my fault that I have so few friends. I spent time doing, not sharing.

Friends, the kind you can call on when the world quits revolving, are few for most, fewer for me I'm afraid. But the point of this rambling is that for all of us there is one shoulder we can cry on, one face we can look into, one hand we can clasp when all falls apart. Just one. Beyond spouses. Beyond best friends. Beyond even that dog who loves so unconditionally.

God is faithful when faith is a commodity we can't buy. God is faithful when I am weary and weak and as the Bible describes, a vapor here today and gone tomorrow.

If the economy falls and the savings fail and the retirement retires and universal health care is nothing close to universal, and there is pain that causes you to cry until the tears run dry, still, STILL, He is faithful.

That is what I lean on. God's love never, never dails. His faithfulness reaches to the skies. Oh, isn't that wonderful news this morning?

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