Sometimes, we are forced to wait in our suffering. I can relate to the psalmist’s cries to God: Let your face shine that I might be saved! Please, Lord, take away the pain of the effects of my sin and of this broken world. You’ve made this your vineyard, why are you not protecting it? Why are you not fixing it? 

I can also relate to the bargaining strategy: Then, we will never turn back from you (like we did before). I’ll never do it again, Lord, I promise!

God's silence can be so frustrating. Sometimes it seems that the more urgent our perceived need, the more silent He appears to be. 

But... as a parent, I can also relate to His silence. Sometimes there just isn’t anything to say. I think of a small child, having a tantrum... I once saw a beautiful video where a father sat on the floor alongside his toddler, who was having a meltdown of epic proportions. The child stomped and jumped and laid on the floor and climbed over his shoulder and kicked and pushed and that dad just gently kept the child from hurting him and hurting herself, offered her his arms and sat quietly beside her as she cried out in frustration and pure emotion. The child was persistent in the tantrum for a good amount of time — but the father simply sat. Eventually, her sobs quieted and she virtually melted into his arms. Her relief was palpable, and her quiet allowed his voice to be heard. 

The vineyard of the Lord is the house of Israel. There is an assurance in that refrain, a constancy, a comfort. God has planted it. He has regard for it. He does give us life. And He has saved us.

Lord, thank you for listening to my cries. Help me to fall into Your arms and quiet my voice so that Yours can be heard.



​
Lindsay Elford

Let me sing for my Beloved.  
Such a start!  
O my sweet Jesus, let this be my first breath everyday — a song for You.


But the songs are different from day to day, or from season to season, and this one Isaiah had to sing is so sad that I don’t want to let it in. A love song so heartbreaking in its expression of loss, a song that cuts a little too close to the bone to be easily sung.


Our Beloved puts His all in. The desire, the hope, the work, the focus, the passion. To grow something sweet, so it could be used to make something even better. Grapes on the vine. But my eye is drawn to the wine vat; the desired fruit is but a step in a process. He has a plan for the fruit of His desire, to make something potent and lasting.


What would You have turned the justice and righteousness into, if You’d been given the chance? What would they have fermented and aged into under Your expert hand?


Our Beloved can’t do anything with the bloodshed and crying. He can’t put them in the hopper. He knows the product of that fruit. Poison. And so He protects us, His people, from what we are becoming. But it doesn’t look like love. Even though it is.  


Sometimes what grows has to be trampled under, returned to the ground, broken down to become food for the next planting. Another chance. 


I sing a song to You, my Beloved. A love song of passion, for the mess I’ve made is never wasted — You use it all. Help me to submit it all to You, so it can become the fertile ground of another chance for Your grace to grow. It’s all worth it to be where You are, O my sweet Jesus, and I know Joy is on the other side of all this. Walking with You, tasting what the fruit of Your Spirit ferments in my life.  

​Teach my song to rise to You...

Lord I Need You - by Matt Maher (feat. Audrey Assad)

... for grace is found where You are.




Noreen Smith

Oh, how I wish I were not so stubbornly human! That when God says to me, “Go work in the vineyard,” I would just be obedient and follow His request. That I would not go through the whole, “Yes, but can it wait until I finish [fill in meaningless activity here].” Or, “But God, I don’t want to do THAT work! Can I do what my sister is doing for You instead?” Or my favourite, “Oh but God, I really love this gift You have given me and would like to keep it all for myself please.”

I have a dear friend who is a spiritual mother to me, and despite living in the same city, we do not see each other as often as we both would like, so have developed a routine of dropping things into the mail to each other. When her husband was terminally ill, I was preparing a card to send to her when I heard the Lord prompt me to add something to the envelope before sending it. I hunted through my box of prayer cards and other spiritual items, but none of it seemed to be what I was supposed to send. As I searched, my heart kept being nudged toward this beautiful comfort cross I had received a few years before. I had held that cross against a relic of Padre Pio and it had been with me in the hospital rooms of both my parents as they made their journeys back to the Lord. Surely this was not what God intended for me to send! I fought with the Lord for a few hours before finally (and perhaps just a bit begrudgingly) agreeing to be obedient and putting the comfort cross in the envelope which my husband delivered to her mailbox that afternoon.

The Lord knew that she needed that cross that very day. She later told me she had been carrying a comfort cross just like this one in her sweater pocket as she journeyed with her husband through medical appointments and palliative care preparations, and somewhere along the journey, had misplaced it. On the very morning that I was arguing with God about giving up my comfort cross, she had pled with Him to  find hers. Within hours of her plea, the envelope was placed in her mailbox. The physical gift of the cross was nice, but the very tangible reminder that God was walking right beside her and hearing her every prayer was so much more beautiful!

And to think that in my humanness and disobedience, I almost stole that from her.

If I profess with my mouth that I believe and trust in Jesus yet do not support those words through action, I am a barren fig tree — all the trappings, but no fruit. A barren tree is not going to attract others to Christ, and if I am not careful, I will be a misleading example for others.

What I am learning is that the Lord is ever so patient with me. He waits while I go through my grumblings, and rejoices when I obey, and for that I am eternally grateful.


“I know the power obedience has of making things easy which seem impossible.” - Saint Teresa of Avila




Sandy Graves