I’ve been dreading the turn of the calendar.  February was never my favorite month, cold weather, made up hallmark holidays and all, but this February is particularly daunting.  I know you feel it for me, because some of you have reached out.  Thank you for that.  Yesterday, I woke up okay, but when I remembered the date, my heart sank a little.  I gave myself a little extra time for my morning quiet time.  I asked God to be close this month as we approach the 10th.  We didn’t make plans to be out of town…there’s no running from the pain.  

I opened my Morning & Evening and the topic was “They shall sing in the ways of the Lord.” I thought, Lord, how can I sing at a time like this?  How can I sing when I live in the shadow of death? Then I opened the Psalms where I have been lingering on chapter 63 for a few days.  

I used to read a Psalm a day after my Morning and Evening, but some of the Psalms are so rich that they are worth spending more than one day on them.  Some meals are better the second time around. Leftovers is not the right word here, but more like a delicious meal prepared fresh for me again. 

    On my bed I remember you;

        I think of you through the watches of the night.

    Because you are my help,

        I sing in the shadow of your wings.

    I cling to you;

        your right hand upholds me.

Here again, is the singing.  But notice what shadow David is singing from. Though in this Psalm, David is in the wilderness.  He’s no longer on the emotional high from slaying the giant; no longer are women singing songs of triumph about him.  He is running for his life, in the shadow of death.  But his song for joy can happen because he feels safe in “the shadow of God’s wings.”  

God is pictured here as a bird or hen, sheltering her chicks from the storm.  What humility from God that He would be described this way.  It is dark, hiding under a mother hen’s wing, I’m sure.  But there is safety from the storm there.  “It is here we find not only consolation but habitation.” God does not promise us that there will be no storms, only that He will keep us safe as we cling to Him under his wing.  It is only from this shadow that we can sing in the midst of adversity.  

Some of David’s sweetest Psalms come out of his bitterest afflictions.  Spurgeon said, “God’s songsters are like nightingales that reserve their sweetest songs for the night.”  Thank God David went through all of the trials and suffering that he did, so that we can benefit from them.  

Will that be said of me?  Will other’s see hope and a reason for joy through their own affliction because of my honest lament?  Not praising God through the death of my son in some morbid, warped way, but because God’s right hand has upheld me through the shadow of Julian’s death.  

As Christians we are called to comfort others because of the comfort we received during our own suffering, 

      “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion

     and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can

     comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For

     just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds

     through Christ.”  2 Corinthians 1:3-5

So this month we cry, we mourn, oh how we mourn, and we wonder why… but then we bow, and we worship, and eventually we sing.  Because Death DOES NOT WIN!  This life is but the front porch to our eternal home where our tears, our mourning, and our wondering will be no more.  That and that alone is why we can sing.

I’ll end with this little story Spurgeon told in one of his sermons I came across recently.  If you’ve lost a loved one may it comfort you as it did me:

“The gardener had a choice flower in his beds. One morning he missed it. He had tended it so carefully that he looked upon it with the affection of a father to a child, and he hastily ran through the garden and sought out one of the servants, for he thought surely an enemy had plucked it, and he said to him, "Who plucked that rose?" And the servant said, "I saw the master walking through the garden early this morning, when the sun was rising, and I saw him bear it away in his hand." Then he that tended the rose said, "It is well; let him be blessed; it was his own; for him I held it; for him I nursed it and if he hath taken it, it is well”

 So be it with your hearts. Feel that it is for the best that you have lost your friend, or that your best relation his departed. God has done it. Be ye filled with comfort.  What God hath done is ever ground for sonnet and for hallelujah. And even here, o'er the dead as yet unburied, our faith begins to sing its song—"'Tis well, 'tis well; 'tis for the best, and let the Lord's name be praised now as ever.”  Spurgeon

xo

Dawn