Friday Hope

     "But I will sing of Your strength; I will sing aloud of Your steadfast love in the morning.  For You have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress.  O my Strength, I will sing praises to You, for You, O God, are my fortress, the God who shows me steadfast love." (Ps.59:16-17)
     3:00 a.m. and Janie and I are keeping watch with the Lord in the predawn darkness.  The Lord seems to wake me impossibly early every morning, but it has become to me the sweetest time of quietly enjoying His presence in this hospital room/sanctuary. Sometimes I cry, all the while thankful that He knows and sees every teardrop and "puts my tears in Your bottle" (Ps.56:8)  But far more often I simply praise Him for His presence, His love, His enabling, His supernatural strength, His answers to prayer after prayer after prayer.  Even in the midst of one challenge after another, He has proved His faithfulness and goodness and grace to us over and over again.  And I praise Him--my Fortress, my Strength, my Savior.
      Janie rests, while her Savior holds her, has her, gently calls her name, and I, too,  listen for His voice amidst the steady buzz and beep of machines.  And I just can't help but feel hope rising.  I know it sounds ridiculous--here in the Intensive Care Unit with my precious daughter on a ventilator and battling a brain injury--but hope finds me even here.  With Christ there is always hope, and I am a prisoner of hope.
     It is friday morning, and my mind wanders back to that terrible friday so long ago--that "Good Friday" when the Lord Jesus took our sin, our shame, our failure to the cross and nailed it to His cross, our cross.  And I think of the story Corrie ten Boom shares in her book, The Hiding Place.   Corrie and her sister Betsie and the other prisoners in the Nazi concentration camp had to endure "medical inspection" every friday where they were forced to strip naked and walk past a phalanx of leering guards.

  "It was one of these mornings while we were waiting, shivering, in the corridor, that a page in the Bible leapt into life for me.

     He hung on the cross.

     "I had not known--I had not thought...The paintings, the carved crucifixes showed at the least a scrap of cloth.  But this, I suddenly knew, was the respect and reverence of the artist. But oh--at the time itself, on that other Friday morning--there had been no reverence. No more than I saw in the faces around us now.  I leaned toward Betsie, ahead of me in line. Her shoulder blades stood out sharp and thin beneath her blue-mottled skin.

     "Betsie, they took His clothes too."

      Ahead of me I heard a little gasp.  "Oh, Corrie. And I never thanked Him..."

       Such human depravity and cruelty stuns me--especially as I sit here in this comfortable hospital surrounded by loving family and friends and caring, wonderful nurses and doctors who constantly tend to my daughter's every need.  Thank You, Jesus.
      But such goodness and grace of our Savior simply astounds and awes me; to think that the Almighty, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe would be willing to be tortured and striped and humiliated for us, all for us, all for our redemption.  Our lives should be one gigantic thank you to the One who gave all, forgave all, did all,  in order to purchase our salvation.
     And so, in the midst of our circumstances, we choose to rejoice in Him.  The same Lord who sustained and fully satisfied the ten Booms in the most desperate of places, does the same with us in the hospital room.  "I will sing aloud of Your steadfast love in the morning."
     And as I praise, hope rises.  Hope in Him and in His love and plans for Janie.  The other day, a dear friend reminded me of Rom.5:2b-5: "we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."
     Yes, He is our hope.  For all of us, in the midst of our suffering, we can be assured that He is working and moving to produce endurance and character and never failing hope along with His glorious love that fills us to overflowing.  We ask not for easier lives Lord, but for deeper, stronger faith that sings in the morning, that overflows with gratitude and that abounds with Your love.
     We don't know what today will bring... but in Him, we rejoice and hope rises.  O Lord, we continue to pray that in Your mercy and grace, You would roll away the stone.  Thank You for Good Friday and for Your never-failing love.  To God, our hope and our song, be all the glory.