Hineni

Here I am.

The speaker in church this morning made a comment that reminded me of something I read during the week...that is the last phrase of Isaiah's talk with God..."Here I am. Send me"  This phrase "here I am" is the word Hineni. Literally it means - I am here, I am aware, I am fully present.

  

Hineni is said only a handful of times in the Bible...by Isaiah in Isaiah 6:8, several times by Abraham concerning the binding of Isaac, by Jacob, Moses, Samuel and by God Himself when He foretells the coming of Christ to earth ...Isaiah 52:6…therefore my people will know my name, Behold here I Am!

 

In truth this word is in direct relation to a call from God, a request “Who will I send?” It is a response to God, to begin living for something larger than yourself, “Are you in?”

I am here, I am aware, I am fully present…living intentionally…of course in relation to my faith, hopefully to anything I feel God is asking me to do, but even more simply, this is something I have been trying to do in my everyday walking about life, which of course God is asking me to do.

Don’t we sometimes get so wrapped up in our sorry problems, our regretful situations and our sad circumstances that we forget to live in the moment, the moment where life is happening right now, the moment where if we live intentionally, we would bypass another regretful situation.

Following is a gathering of ideas and thoughts of what I need to keep in mind of this walking about life of mine…not necessarily all my words but I love them just the same.

Have a vision of who I want to be, what I want to contribute, where I want to be…to be my best self, to be present and to be intentional.

Believe in my ability to figure things out; with time dedication and effort it will happen.  It will not be easy, there will be suffering, other people will be j-rks…but I will figure it out, proving my confidence and competence and worth.

Have fun, even when it’s hard…be pro-active, bring joy…I will bring light to the darkness.  This is not luck, it is discipline.

Be patient…be cool…allow time for things to happen, be persistent.  Be the peaceful warrior.

Love and respect others in this game of life…this is critical to my everyday walking about life.

Trust God; to let go and let God. Stop planning and thinking and being affected, practice accepting what I cannot change.

Show gratitude; my blessings and His amazing grace.

I love that…here I am.

Carrying My Questions Like Stones

I read an article this weekend, it spoke to the fact of how we mourn the events of Friday, Good Friday, the suffering and death of Christ, how He was buried in a tomb.  This article also spoke to how we rejoice to the outcome of Sunday, Easter Sunday, the joy of Christ alive, He lives!  But, what the article was really speaking to was Saturday, the day in between, the day where Christ lay in the tomb, waiting;  the day where His friends suffered His loss, were filled with confusion, uncertainty, doubts, loss of purpose and questions…so many questions.

Friends of Jesus, hearts and souls filled with hard questions; the questions that happened before the hope of Sunday, not knowing that they were waiting…just knowing loss of their hope.

This article went so far as to say that as Christians we live our lives as if we are always in the Saturday…forever waiting, overcome with questions, as if our hope is gone.

Do you think so?

I think as Christians we know where our hope lies, and it is in the Sunday; alive in Him.  Even so, I think we often find it difficult to apply this hope to our everyday walking about lives and we suffer in our circumstances, we are overloaded with the questions…questions that trip us up on our path as we go.  We want answers that will clear up our suffering and loss of purpose, answers to our Saturday questions.

What do we do with those Saturdays, those days filled with the uncertainty, those days weighed down with confusion, overcome with loss…those days where our questions seem to go unanswered?   What do we do with the Saturdays that leave us with feelings of loss, loss of purpose, loss of life…loss of hope?

This is what we do, we pick up the questions, the ones we don’t understand and we carry them in our hands, feeling them, turning them over again and again, throwing some away, tossing them to the edges of our path.  And others…we carry them like stones, waiting for Sunday, like a comfort…blessings in disguise.

I know my Saturday and I am carrying those questions like stones, rolling them over in my hands…some I have thrown away, some, their answers too personal even though I hold on to them,, others I hold gently but surely, my hope and my certainty; my questions are blessings in disguise.

The article I was reading, adapted from the book 'A Glorious Dark: Finding Hope in the Tension Between Belief and Experience' ended with this:

"We didn’t anticipate those dark moments of questions and waiting, they are nonetheless holy moments. Faith isn’t just Good Friday and Easter Sunday; faith is awkward Saturday too. "

 AJ Swoboda

I love that.

I am carrying my questions like stones.