God speaks through old postcards

I wrote previously about how after we have walked with Christ for awhile, we begin to see patterns in the way He deals with us as individuals. At that time I wrote of how God speaks to me through His creation. Until yesterday, I had forgotten one of the other ways.

I was looking for a recipe and pulled a cookbook off my shelf that didn’t look familiar. (That was because it was one that my husband had from his bachelor days.) When I opened it up, a postcard fell out. His mom had sent him a recipe on it March 10, 1989 and the front of the card had the following poem.

I Needed the Quiet
Alice Hansche Mortenson

I needed the quiet so He drew me aside,
Into the shadows where we could confide.
Away from the bustle where all the day long
I hurried and worried when active and strong.

I needed the quiet tho at first I rebelled
But gently, so gently, my cross He upheld
And whispered so sweetly of spiritual things
Tho weakened in body, my spirit took wings
To heights never dreamed of when active and gay.
He loves me so greatly He drew me away.

I needed the quiet. No prison my bed,
But a beautiful valley of blessings instead –
A place to grow richer in Jesus to hide.
I needed the quiet so He drew me aside.

From the book I Needed The Quiet, © 1978 by Beacon Hill Press

Until I read that, I had failed to remember that there have been several significant periods in my life when God has put me flat on my back (read: allowed me to be very sick) in order to get my attention. I’ve even talked with people in the past about how God will sometimes lay me out flat so He can get my attention when He has something really important He wants to show me.

So I was not only encouraged by the poem, I was encouraged by the reminder of God’s faithfulness to work, not in spite of the hard times but because He allows them on purpose. Not to hurt me, but because He loves me so much. We don’t think of pain and love as going hand in hand, but in God’s economy they certainly do. All I can think of is getting better, getting off these medicines that make me feel crummy, and getting back to “living life”. But in God’s plan to make me more Christlike, I am “living life” and probably living it more fully right now as I am forced to cling to Him than I would be if I were just going about daily life as it falls into place.

A verse that God has given to me on a few significant occasions is Joel 2:25. God is speaking and says, “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten – the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm – my great army that I sent among you.” The words that are circled in my Bible are in bold here. God controlled the locust and sent the locust for a purpose. It was an event that probably seemed destructive at the time, but was under God’s control and according to His purposes.

May we all rest in God’s purposes each day, even when He draws us aside because we need the quiet.

The deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done.
Elisabeth Elliot
Passion and Purity