01 02 03 Tattered Hymnal: In All Things, Give Thanks - Guest Post by Amymarie Schmidt 04 05 15 16 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 31 32 33

In All Things, Give Thanks - Guest Post by Amymarie Schmidt

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At the start of this Lenten season, I asked some friends to help out by providing some guest posts. Last week I shared a wonderful post and song by my sister and brother-in-law. If you missed it, you can find it here.
This week, I am excited to share a post by my good friend, Amy Schmidt. Check out her blog   one filament against the firmament   Seriously, check it out. It's really great.

Lent represents the 40 days Christ spent in the desert. I’ve been thinking a lot about deserts but not in regards to Jesus and His 40 days spent there.

 I’ve been thinking about the Israelites & their 40 year punishment in the desert.

In the last 32 years of my life, the story of the Israelites, their escape from Egypt and their subsequent wandering has been recounted to me in endless ways.  I’ve sang songs about it, with absurd hand motions and obnoxious melodies.  I’ve made dioramas of it, with little people made out of popsicles sticks and a Moses with a cotton beard down to his popsicle stick knees.  Then, in my more mature years, I heard about it in sermons, heard it likened to many things in the metaphors of popular worship songs.  Even compared my life to it, claiming some melodramatic trial I was going through similar to their plight.

 I’ve done everything but actually read the scripture.

 So I read it.  And do you know what?  The Israelites were sentenced to forty years of desert wandering because they complained.  God forbid them from entering the land He promised because they weren’t content with how He was providing for them.  He banished them to a miserable world just outside the beautiful world He’d set aside for them because they grumbled at Him.  (Numbers 14:26-35)

 Caleb & Joshua were the only exceptions, their exception being a “different spirit”.  God granted them access to the Promise Land because they had a heart of thanksgiving, a spirit of contentment when every one of their neighbors, friends and cohorts was bitter-hearted and negative-tongued.(Numbers 14: 24 & 30)

 I read this and I was stunned.  Never before has the lingering voice of my father telling a five-year-old me to “be happy with what you have” been more loud, more clear or more convicting. Our God takes a content-spirit so seriously that its opposite evokes His wrath and punishment.  He actually withholds good things from those who complain or spit in the eye of His provision.  A content-spirit is so crucial to our walk with Him that it’s included as one of the Ten Commandments!  Right there with do not murder and do not commit adultery is do not covet but be content with what you have.

 And how easy is it to disobey this command?  How simple to complain about everything.  The dishes, the weather, the job, the actions or un-actions of a spouse, the car, the house, the weather again.  Complaints roll so carelessly off the tongue.  If only statements coating the tongue like sugar.

 At least my tongue.

But scripture says this “…be content with what you have, for He has said ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’  (Hebrews 13: 5b) Nowhere in that scripture does it give by-laws to this instruction, stating we don’t have to be content with the difficult stuff, the annoying stuff, the unfortunate stuff. It doesn’t say “be content when things are nice and your husband just bought you ice cream”.  It just says “be content”, right now, in everything.

 Now, this is not news to me necessarily.  I’ve always known contentment to be a worth-while trait. It doesn’t take much forethought to realize a content person is usually happier than a discontent person. But, that the Father of Lights, the Giver of all things, actually withholds bounty from those who make complaint their native language?  This is new, this is convicting, this is crucial.

 What is even more terrifying to me is that my dissatisfied heart might be holding me back from doing the work the Lord has set before me to do.  Hebrews 13:21 says He will “equip [us] with everything good thing that [we] may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight.” There is no higher calling then do that which is pleasing in the sight of Yahweh, to chase His dreams set before us.  This is why we are alive; it’s what makes life worth living, what gives our fumbling frames purpose.

 And if I need to be given good things in order to do His will and a grumbling mouth invokes His wrath, causes Him to withhold that which is good from the people He loves, pleading with him for a “clean heart...a right spirit”, one that speaks of joy, a soul that is satisfied as with marrow (Psalms 63:5) first and foremost and always is of utmost importance.
“My God, do not give me back to myself.  Do not let me settle for anything but You.  In You I hide, escaping from my ruin.  Please do not give me back to myself.” --Rumi

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