Shuffled To Blessings

You know those moments when you are minding your own business just trying to get through your busy day as efficiently as possible and you have your iPod on shuffle to drown out the thoughts that keep bombarding you and you realize you are no longer listening to something safe like a song from your Eagles' Greatest Hits album, Jack Johnson (banana pancakes, anyone?) or some old (and by old I mean OLD, like 20 years before I was born OLD, don't laugh, I happen to love that musical generation!) country song but your iPod has shuffled you to a song that causes you to freeze. So now, you are standing frozen in the middle of your kitchen, broom in mid-stroke (thankful you are home alone with no one to witness your apparent sudden paralyzation) and a knot forms in your throat and you feel your eyes filling with tears. And you can do nothing but listen while salty tears cascade down your cheeks:


If I find in myself
desires nothing in this world can satisfy,
I can only conclude
that I, I was not made for here
If the flesh that I fight is at best
only light and momentary,
then of course I'll feel nude
when to where I'm destined I'm compared

Speak to me in the light of the dawn
Mercy comes with the morning
I will sigh and with all creation groan
as I wait for hope to come for me

Am I lost or just less found?
On the straight or on the roundabout
of the wrong way?
Is this a soul that stirs in me
is it breaking free, wanting to come alive?
'Cos my comfort would prefer for me to be numb
And avoid the impending birth
of who I was born to become

Speak to me in the light of the dawn
Mercy comes with the morning
I will sigh and with all creation groan
as I wait for hope to come for me

For we, we are not long here
Our time is but a breath,
so we better breathe it
And I, I was made to live
I was made to love
I was made to know you
Hope is coming for me
Hope, He's coming for me
Hope is coming for me
Hope, He's coming

Speak to me in the light of the dawn
Mercy comes with the morning
I will sigh and with all creation groan
as I wait for hope to come for me
For me, for me, for me

("C.S. Lewis Song" By: Brooke Fraser)


It is in moments like these, when God makes His presence so undeniable, so unable to be ignored that I yearn for so much more of Him. He knows the heartaches of our flesh and hears the cries of our heart, though unspoken, as we parade around with a phony smile etched on our face. There is beauty in knowing that God will give you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it regardless of what plans we have for our life. Too often we get so caught up in what we want, in what we have planned, in what we need to do that we put on our cozy ear muffs and tell God we will get to what He wants when it is convenient for us. And yet He loves us enough to give us what we need, complete brokenness. The inability to even attempt to rely on anything but Him, the not-so-subtle reminder that we are absolutely nothing without Him. I am so thankful that God loves me enough to give me what my pride won't let me ask for. It is through this blessing of brokenness, through vision clouded with tears that I see my God, my Savior the most clearly and reflect on His words, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me" (Matthew 16:24) remembering that the cross we are to pick up daily isn't meant to be an instrument of burden, but an instrument of death. And so, it is my prayer that God humbles me daily when I pick up my cross and die to self, as I anxiously await His return.