Last Word Spoken

Who likes to have the last word in an argument? I boldly put up my hand. I wouldn’t say that I do so with pride.

There was a time, way back in my teacher days, when I got involved in a spat with a pupil. I think that we have both gone beyond the point of reasoned argument. It was all about getting the last word and neither of us was about to surrender. I don’t remember what it was about, or who won, but I remember afterwards, when the pupils had left the class, one pupil remained behind. Her name was Katherine and she helped me with running the Scripture Union.

“Wow,” she said, “That was a wonderful spat! You, and he, were magnificent. You just wouldn’t let him have the last word, would you? Would it have hurt that much to walk away?”

And there you have it! God’s word spoken from someone much younger than me who I was supposed to be mentoring. It was not the best witness, but I remember it and times when I desperately want that last word, Katherine’s words come to mind.

I have been reading my way through the life of Elisha. There has been a famine. It was a bad one. There had been a lot of ugliness. If you want to find out what is in the human heart just put people through a hard time. What is in the heart will come to the surface. The king was on the brink of surrender. Elisha brought comfort and assured the king,

“Hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says: About this time tomorrow, a seah of the finest flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.” (2 Kings 7:1)

It did not look as if it were possible. The king was leaning on one of his officers, who voiced his doubt.

“Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?” (2 Kings 7:2)

God doesn’t have problems with people speaking out their honest doubts, but this was not what the man was doing.  It wasn’t genuine perplexity about the impossibility of it, it was mockery. He was pouring contempt into every word. He was saying God was not powerful enough to do such a miracle so swiftly. Food falling down from heaven was God’s only option because they were surrounded by the enemy – as if He could do that. Elisha was talking nonsense.

The officer’s words spoken were not part of a private conversation between him and Elisha. They were spoken in the presence the king and in the hearing of however many people were standing nearby.  

Words have power. Godly conversation matters. What I say, and what I hear and repeat, has the potential to destroy another’s faith, or plant in them a seed to unbelief. That’s what the officer was doing. He was destroying faith with his words and planting seeds of unbelief.

Elisha stepped into the conversation to say again that the famine would end, adding that the officer would see it but not taste it.

“You will see it with your own eyes,” answered Elisha, “but you will not eat any of it!” (2 Kings 7:2)

Elisha had the last word – he didn’t leave the man’s mockery to be the last word.

That challenges me. There are some last words that we cannot surrender to the enemy. There are times when leaving the enemy to have the last word echoing in people’s ears is the wrong thing to so. The last word spoken in the encounter between Elisha and the officer was a word of truth.

Many of my conversations are not with other people. I have a lively interaction of comments in my head. I say things to myself. Sometimes what I tell myself is truth, but often it’s not. It may not be a destructive lie but sometimes it falls short of the truth God wants me to know. Whether I’m talking to myself or to another person, I need to make sure the last word, the one that echoes in my ears is truth.

Those last words spoken in any conversation matter - let us leave people with words of faith.

Psalm 40:2-4

Lord, reach down and rescue me
For the ground beneath my feet is sinking
I have no light to see by

Lord, reach down and rescue me
Set me down on a rock that will not move
Hold my hand until I am steady

Lord, reach down and rescue me
I’ve had my fill of lament and dirge
I yearn to sing a better song

Lord, reach down and rescue me
That I might tell of Your saving power
Drawing others near to trust you

Lord, reach down and rescue me
The proud and the powerful look away
But I will put my trust in You

The Valley of the Shadow of Death

I was listening to a sermon illustration this morning, I think I was holding my breath and saying in my head, “Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it.” And he didn’t.

Have you ever read those devotionals, the happy being single ones? There are a lot of single Christian ladies out there who have been conditioned to expect to be married and have children. Someone who was single piles on the wisdom of how to be happy and single in a church and then in at the end praises God that He led her to the perfect man and now she is happily married. The implication is that singleness is not a godly state to be in. To be truly fulfilled a woman needs to be married.

Or maybe you have read those devotionals, the content the being childless ones. Not everyone has all the bits necessary to have children, but, yet again Christian wives are conditioned to expect children and a quiver full. There’s more wisdom on how to deal with barrenness. Hannah gets a mention as does her prayer. Then after all the heartache, the writer ends by saying that just like Hannah, God gave her children.

The speaker this morning was preaching the next in a series of words based on Psalm 23. We have got to the bit about walking in the valley of the shadow of death. It’s not a leading up to death word that is saved for funerals, but a daily life word for when, not if, we go through difficult times. It may be sickness, unemployment or debt. Sometimes it’s not what you do but just where you find yourself. It happens to us all.

This man’s valley was in the area of pregnancy and childbirth. There was a time when his wife came out the bathroom waving a home pregnancy test. The line was thick and blue announcing the pregnancy. The first hospital scan took place. Things were not going well. The baby’s heartbeat was weak and slow. They were told to wait a couple of weeks, go back and see if things had changed.

The man and his wife and probably everyone in the church were praying. They were urgent, messy, passionate prayers. It’s this part of the narrative where I’m thinking, “Please don’t say it. Please don’t say it.” I wanted them to have a happy ending. I wanted the story to come out well. More than that I wanted their story to be just like mine. There was a miscarriage. There was no happy ending. I can’t say I was glad there was a miscarriage. I’ve been there, done that, shed the tears and I wouldn’t want any woman to go through that.

I’m not sure what I would have felt if for all the urgent, messy and passionate prayers, the baby had a strong heartbeat and was delivered safely however many months later. It didn’t happen that way. There was a miscarriage and I thought, “I’m not the only one.”

The word spoke so powerfully to me. I had not accepted my miscarriage in any passive way. I was praying powerful, faith-full words. I was begging God to save my child and it didn’t happen. When I fell pregnant a second time, I tried not to think that I’d been down that path before when I began bleeding early into the pregnancy. It was, however, another miscarriage.

My pregnancies happened through fertility treatment. It didn’t help that many of the ladies in the church disapproved of the treatment. They wanted a proper miracle. They wanted Hannah. I’d seen what trying to be Hannah had done for other women, how hard it was on the emotions, and always that sense of failure that was not said but felt. I wasn’t a young wife. I didn’t have decades to wait. I didn’t want to give birth in my forties and have a child while claiming a pension. I believe that God gives medical know-how to doctors that Hannah did not have access to.

To know that someone else had walked through my dark valley and experienced my road – and had prayed just as hard as I did for a happy ending that never came – I felt understood. This man, I thought, can speak into my life because he has been where I have been. I didn’t begrudge the next pregnancy and the strong baby heartbeat that he experienced. Just knowing that he knew my path was enough. He knew my unhappy ending.

The other thing that came to mind, I think it was a forgiving of myself. I’d always held in the deepest parts of me, the places in me that I rarely explored, that it was my fault I’d miscarried. I questioned whether my prayers were passionate enough or whether I really had faith to see God act. Perhaps the whole fertility treatment was, as the women in the church insisted, not God’s plan.  Maybe I was Hannah and all I needed was patience.

I will say this, I never once felt, through that difficult journey, that God had abandoned me. I was always swift to come into His presence. I cried endless tears, but I never came to end of God’s comfort. I am not a person that thinks God is any less than God, if what I want doesn’t happen. God will answer my “why?” when I see Him.

I laid it all to rest. I never went on to have children, but I believe that God opened up another way for me to be creative. I began to write poetry.  It’s not God’s second best destiny for me, but the one He always planned for me to step into. 

Tree Blossom Banter

I mowed the back lawn the other day. The grass wasn’t entirely dry. Other parts of the UK might be soaking up the sunshine but that doesn’t always apply to the North of Scotland. It was the first cut of the year, so the grass wasn’t entirely short either. The council had just started emptying the garden bins. The blades of the mower weren’t entirely sharp. A storm wind had pulled the felt roofing off the shed so we might have been dealing with a bit of rust. There were things lurking in the long grass and as the mower hit the unknown, stones and branches and half a coconut shell that had once been a bird feeder swinging from the whirly gig, it didn’t sound entirely happy. but we pushed on.

There was a tractor in the field out back cutting grass. In the time it took the man to mow the whole field, I was still plugging away on my back lawn. If the pubs had been open, and the mower a person, I would have treated it to a pint or two.

You can understand then how I found myself on the sofa. I was hot and decided to forgo the half dozen rows of knitting I have trained myself to do if I’m sitting there. Wiping stinging sweat from my eyes I looked out of the window.

It was a breezy afternoon. The wind was tugging off the last of the blossom and spilling it over the lawn like confetti. Sometimes it feels like it takes the tree forever to erupt into blossom. It’s a cherry tree but doesn’t produce any cherries and each year I feel robbed. Each year there seems to be a few windy days just after the blossom has popped out and it is all too swiftly gone.

The tree has done with the blossom. It had done its job and the tree no longer needs the blossom. If I was a tree, I would delight in my blossom self and loving my pretty self that I would waste energy into holding on to my blossom. I would be battling the wind as it snatched the blossom out of my twig fingers.

Real trees know when to let go. They move out of the blossom stage and into another season of growth. All their energy is now spent on buds and leaves and soaking up sunshine. It’s as if the tree surrenders up those bits of itself that are no longer needed. Secret signals pass through the tree passing on t message that it’s time to let go. Something new is on its way. A new season of life.

I was listening to a message of surrendering on Sunday. There is so much that God wants to do with and through me. In order to be the best “me” that He can work with I need to do a lot of letting go. I have a life history that tells me “I’ve got this” when I haven’t. Everything I need to be the best “me” God has done.

If I was a tree and watching the buds punctuate the branch like fat commas that burst into leaves, I would say, “Wow!” Just as I like the pretty blossom me, I would like the leafy green me and as autumn arrived, I would be wasting energy again to hold on to my leaves as they bronze and rust. I would have another battle with the wind to stop it snatching them away. But real trees know when to let go. The old leaves have done their job and the tree moves into another season of life.

I need to learn from trees that there is a time for letting go, for surrendering the things that I am done with. There is a new adventure on its way, and I need to clear the decks. I cannot afford to be expending energy holding on to something that has done its job.

If I was a tree, I’m not sure whether I am blossoming, hatching buds, bursting leaves or browning them off ready for them to fall. I’m not sure whether there is a winter quietness on me of gathering and amassing energy for a new season. Maybe I’m all those things at once in different parts of my life. I pay careful attention to what Spirit says as He directs me life and I’m ready to respond.