08 Dec To Make Him More Dear
Feathers
The one-to-one dialogue, with which God weaves our harness of relationship with Him, unfolds in a language of subtlety using coincidence and symbol, whose meaning can only be fully understood by the two who share it. For Rachael it was red-tailed hawks, for me it is feathers.
The unique meaning of feathers shared between God and me began beside a lake in a Vermont forest. Struggling to keep it together, I had left the cabin, the kids and Bill to find a stolen piece of solace to restore my sanity. Bill and I were going through a particularly tough time in our marriage, and our vacation was not easing the strain as we had hoped. It was more like we had been thrown into a cauldron of super-heated built-up resentment, without the relief of his daily leaving for work.
I vented my anger and frustration alone with God beside the lake hidden in the trees. It took a while, but when I finally found the place where I was able to listen, I turned to the Psalms and began to read. As dappled sunlight flickered across the page, one verse leapt up to infuse me with a strong sense of comfort.
He will cover you with His feathers; you will take refuge under His wings.
Psalm 91:4, HCSB
Closing my eyes, I focused on that image of refuge, being kept safe under His wings. Afew minutes later my children’s voices across the water drew my heart to them. I was ready to go back. But as I was rising to leave I felt an inner stop . . . “No, wait. I left something for you.”
Looking all around and then at the ground, I saw it – a feather. Long and full, it had been left for me, a feather from His outstretched wing. Kneeling down, pierced by a new tenderness for Him, I reached for the first feather in what has become a sacred collection. Each one has come with the same message, in a moment when I have needed to be reminded that my refuge lies beneath His wings.
I never had time to tell Rachael about my feathers. So it was a particularly tender and meaningful gesture the morning we departed, when she ran breathlessly to press a tail feather from a red-tailed hawk into my hand, her eyes glistening with tears as we said goodbye. She couldn’t have known what God was saying to me.
Years later, in a black-screaming-pain time of my life, I behaved quite badly. Hurling my pain at God, I accused Him of not being there for me. “You haven’t helped me, held me up, or spoken a word to me!” I lashed out blaming Him. “Nothing speaks to me from Scripture or prayer! Where are YOU?”
Feeling utterly abandoned, when I most needed Him, I had a good cry. The picture of self-centered, wretched emotional immaturity, I was clearly overmatched by even the bunny-slopes of the present terrain—but it was perilous for me, all the same. For sure, I couldn’t feel it, but I was harnessed to a lifeline with which He was about to draw me to
His side.
As the last of my sniffling subsided, my eyes happened to fall upon the open page of my Bible, which I had read and left the day before. The words that had spoken to me the day before were brightly lined by my yellow hi-liter, because they had struck me as being somehow significant, even though the meaning of their message could not yet penetrate my wretched heart. On that open page, resting on those hi-lighted words lay a tiny down feather.
That feather — it must have been forced from the pillow that I had been punching and throwing around, burying my face in to cry. It made me laugh at my absurdity. It was so soft and small and white, but it was a feather. In the inimitable intimacy of our shared language, my Lord was reaching into our shared history, to bring me the message that dwelt in the symbol of that feather, so that He could draw me under His wings. Instinctively I reached for my Bible to re-read the original passage that accompanied my first feather—for here was my lifeline.
The one who lives under the protection of the Most High dwells in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.” He Himself will deliver you from the hunter’s net, from the destructive plague. He will cover you with His feathers; you will take refuge under His wings. His faithfulness will be a protective shield. . . . Because you have made the Lord—my refuge, the Most High—your dwelling place, no harm will come to you . . . You will not fear the terror of the night, the arrow that flies by day, the plague that stalks in darkness, or the pestilence that ravages at noon. Though a thousand fall at your side and ten thousand at your right hand, the pestilence will not reach you.
Selected verses from Psalm 91,
In the Holman Christian Standard Bible
Sometimes the most destructive plague, the greatest terror that threatens to bring us down, is the one we unleash upon ourselves.
To make Him more dear
God’s purpose in creating a shared language with us is not whimsical; it weaves the harness that wraps our heart. It builds our love of God. And every time He speaks to us in the language that only we share, He pierces us with a new tenderness that makes Him more dear.
God’s dearness to us is not an option—it is an essential requirement upon the icy steeps. Our devotion to Him functions like a harness to which we clip the lifeline that will hold us securely.
Because he is lovingly devoted to Me (harness), I will deliver him; I will exalt him \because he knows My name (lifeline). When he calls out to Me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble. I will rescue him . . . I will . . . show him My salvation.
Psalm 91: 14-16, HCSB
* * *
A story has unbelievably more potential to forward our relationship with God than a list of things we need to do. Do you know why?
We become like what we behold
A vision of what a relationship with God looks like is immeasurably more powerful to get us there than a list of things to do, because of the spiritual dynamic that we become like what we behold. If you behold a vision of God in relationship with you, longing for what you see, you will become what you see.
2 Cor 3:18, NASU
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory…
A relationship with God
is not something you do
by following prescribed steps
—it is something you become—
as you behold and believe the vision God gives you.