a view through annie's eyes

Update on Bev: Surgery was from 7:30 to 9:30 and it went really well. She is headed home now and probably taking a nice nap. I’m sure she’d appreciate your continued prayers for her healing. Thanks be to God for all His mercies.

There are many facets to illness and lessons to take away from the experience, but one especially stands out to me this day. A peculiar Truth happens when we seek Him during our suffering. In sickness, we have an opportunity for God to take full charge of making Himself known in our lives. He manifests within us the very hope that will see us through the hardship. And when we are weak, we can ask Him to grasp tighter, that in our weakness, He is made stronger within us. In our brokenness, as we seek Him, His blessed presence is palpably evidenced.

I remember my own weeks of healing where I rested totally in His arms and thought it a place I wasn’t ready to leave. Though the pain kept me from many words, it allowed a stillness to come over me that opened my eyes to more of Him than I had known in my healthier days. I got well, and as I did, each day brought a little more fog. I had prayed to never forget, to remain in that amazing place, but I’m not sure this earthly body could bear that much of the continual thickness of His presence. When God passed before Moses, He hid him in the cleft of the rock, so that His Glory would not consume him. There is so much more to God than our frail hearts can even begin to bear. Yet, when we are in need, He is our ever-present help, our very breath of Life.

I haven’t seen this kind of pure revelation of God in a long while. Recently, I was reminded of that wonderful place where I dwelt for such a short time. My sweet friend, Bev, has literally brought Him to me in her raw, honest place of letting Him carry her these past five weeks. She has a place of surrender that few find short of a calamity in their lives. And she was no exception. Tomorrow morning, she will have a lumpectomy and the removal of any involved lymph nodes. However, she has found that Place where nothing of this earth can harm her, because she is under the protection of His almighty Wing. Check out her blog today for specific prayers she asks for. Even in her hardship, she brings a Hope and a Joy that is only found in Christ.

In an old book I love,  Rose from Brier, Amy Carmichael tells of her own revelations of the Lord, while on her sickbed. She notes how this time became an opportunity: “Sometimes when I have had to go through a painful dressing, or the reopening of a wound that was closing too quickly, the only thing has been first to drop into His arms, and put upon Him the whole responsibility of making His Word a reality. I have longed that it might be made real to others, also, through this. (Psalm 63:8) “My soul hath run clinging to Thee, on me hath Thy right hand laid hold.”  The thought in it has often come to me these days. I have been too weak to cling sometimes, so He has had to grasp me. Surely of all the places where His presence is a reality, the bed of pain is especially so. We do know that these light afflictions (which sometimes seem very heavy) are working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. How marvelous the contrast! Surely in the contemplation of it we can begin to praise in the furnace.”