Miserere, my Maker,
O have mercy on me, wretch, strangely distressèd,
Cast down with sin oppressèd;
Mightily vexed to the soul’s bitter anguish,
E’en to the death I languish.
Yet let it please Thee
To hear my ceaseless crying:
Miserere, miserere, I am dying.
Miserere, my Saviour,
I, alas, am for my sins fearfully grievèd,
And cannot be relievèd
But by Thy death, which Thou didst suffer for me,
Wherefore I adore Thee.
And do beseech Thee
To hear my ceaseless crying:
Miserere, miserere, I am dying.
Holy Spirit, miserere,
Comfort my distressèd soul, grieved for youth’s folly,
Purge, cleanse and make it holy;
With Thy sweet due of grace and peace inspire me,
How I desire Thee.
And strengthen me now
In this, my ceaseless crying:
Miserere, miserere, I am dying.
—Anonymous, c. 1615
[Note: "Miserere" is the first word of the 51st Psalm in Latin]
It’s a quarter to four in the afternoon and the sun is setting on Slovakia, which reminds me that my thanks are overdue. For those of you who are interested and who prayed for me when I injured my back, I have an update: I have been back-pain-drug-free for four days now. I can walk upright like a regular human being (in fact, I estimate that I walked between eight and ten kilometers yesterday). The only time I notice back pain is when I wake in the morning and I’m stiffer than usual for an old man.
So, thanks for your prayers – and the highest thanks of all to our great and merciful Physician.
Today my back took a turn for the worse, and we witnessed a miracle – which Paula caught on camera. No, I wasn’t healed. What happened was even more rare, at least in my experience. Take a look at the first picture, and let me explain:
You are looking at two doctors, a pediatrician and his internist wife. They are standing in our living room. This is not a social call – they have come to tend to me and my bad back. This is what was called in days of old a House Call. It was required because I was unable to move from the floor. Now look at Exhibit B:
I’m receiving a doctor’s consultation right there on my living room floor. He gave me a shot of a pain-killer, and a prescription for some muscle relaxers. They stayed about 25 minutes or so. How much would you expect to pay for such a thing – assuming you could get it? Before you answer, look below at the goodies they left on our kitchen table.
Yes, that’s the syringe, complete with needle. And the broken glass vial that the medicine was in.
We paid $20 for the visit, the shot, and the leftovers.
One duty here that everyone shares is to help set up the rooms for different activities. That means moving furniture, and yesterday my turn at this duty ended quickly. I was sliding a couch sideways with a twisting motion and threw my back out, as they say. It happens to be the worst I have ever injured it – I am almost completely immobilized – so I would appreciate your prayers.
And if you have seen Brian Regan’s skit on the emergency room, you will understand what I mean when I say that my pain is level 8….
One aspect of our calling that I relish is the prospect of working side-by-side with Paula. We had a taste of this the past two years in an English Camp in the Czech Republic, and it was delicious. We are complementary in almost every way, and we have been growing together for almost 30 years.
But as lovely as it sounds, I suspect it will have its challenges too, and will demand that we both learn more patience, more graciousness, more love, more mutual submission. Those challenges could also be exacerbated in the first year, when we have to deal with culture shock while adjusting to working with each other more than we ever have.
Therefore I ask you, yet again, to pray for us. I hope you never grow weary of my greedy appeals for prayer – I know we will never grow out of our need for God’s work in us and, therefore, never out of our need for your prayers.
I’d like you to pray for a pot of gold.
Not a pot filled with gold for me – I already have more than I need as far as that goes. Rather, pray that I would become a pot made of gold. That is, pray along these lines:
In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for noble purposes and some for ignoble. If a man cleanses himself from the latter, he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.
2 Timothy 2:20-21 [NIV]
These verses consumed my meditation a few years ago, when I was fervently praying about life after Dell. Out of those prayers, I believe, grew this invitation to join the team in Trnava. But the invitation is not the fulness of the answer to those prayers. What I ask is to be useful – useful to the team, useful to Slovaks, useful to the Master. So please pray.
We leave in less than three weeks. We will fly from Austin on 27 September, and arrive the next day in Vienna, where our team will pick us up and haul us to Trnava.
I’m hyperventilating….
Our pastor has been preaching through Luke’s gospel for a while, so I’ve been meditating my way through it in parallel. I’ve been camped for several days on two words in two episodes. The first is in chapter 15 and the second in chapter 19. Here are the verses in the ESV:
Now the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him. And the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” [15:1-2]
And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all grumbled, “He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” [19:5-7]
Jesus can’t win with the Pharisees: (more…)
I’ve been admiring and thinking a lot about Van Gogh’s Sower. A sower of seed is an obvious representation of our new calling, our new lives. I’d like to be as faithful to that calling as this sower who casts seed in his field day after day, year after year – even till the shadows grow long at the end of the day.
The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. [2 Timothy 2:6]
Consider Psalm 118:8-9
It is better to take refuge in Yahweh
than to trust in man.
It is better to take refuge in Yahweh
than to trust in princes.
Franky Schaeffer interviewed his father and mother about their lives of faith at L’Abri. They talked at length about the fact that Francis and Edith never asked anyone (except God) for money to support L’Abri. Francis was careful to explain that they believed this was God’s call on their lives – a means for them to live at that time and in that place in a way that demonstrated that God exists. He stressed that it was not a model or law for everyone, but their own sense of the leading of the Spirit. (more…)