Poetry from the Cabin 01/12/2024

We have been in a season of waiting for a long time. Waiting on the right open door for ministry. Waiting on a permanent home. Waiting on a place where we can replant our roots. To be sure our waiting is not passive. We are participating in ministry and community, and our family is not homeless. But we also know we are not there yet. Growing in maturity is often a painful process. God used the desert years to teach the Isrealites that He was their provider. I sense that that is exactly what God is teaching us, my family and I, now. No matter what the world around us looks like God continues to provide exactly what we need when we need it.

Two weeks ago I was praying about what to do about work because the jobs I was doing were drying up. The next morning at seven o’clock I received a call, unlooked for, asking me to come to work. A few days after moving into this amazing cabin, the furnace in our camper quit. It was not winterized but I showed up and it must have just broken because nothing froze. I had time to winterize everything, now three days later it is -20 degrees fahrenheit. God’s provision is miraculous and timely. Our situation would be so much different if God had not provided this Cabin, or even if the furnace had quit only hours earlier.

The fourth stanza alludes to Jonah. In these wilderness times it is easy to believe that somehow we are running from God’s will. And, quite seriously, it is worth considering. What prejudices, insecurities, or immaturity is preventing us from following God’s lead? These are real questions worth considering.

The albatross in this poem comes from Samuel Talor Colridge’s, The Rhythm of the Ancient Mariner. Later echoed by C. S. Lewis in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In both cases the Albatross guides out of hopeless circumstances back onto the right path and is symbolic of Jesus. He represents restored fortune and brings with him the wind, or guiding direction of the spirit.

Father, what is your will

I am tossed to and fro by this world

Throne upon this raging sea

Chaos is overwhelming me

O Lord I am your well loved child

Confused and lost among the wilds

Where is your path to follow strait

Where my feet will walk by faith

O God my heart is breaking fast

Are my dreams by you held fast

Am I walking in your will

Will you tell this storm to still

Or must I travel through the deep

Swallowed up among seaweed

Vomited upon the shore

There to grudgingly walk forward

Father move my heart with love

Directed by heaven above

Feat that tread upon the deep

In the dessert mana to eat

I wait here for the albatross

That guides your way when all seems lost

Bach to the light of sun and moon

He’s coming to direct us soon

Before reading the following verse, keep in mind that the word here translated perfect, could just as well be translated as mature.

2 Count it all joy, my brothers,‡ when you fall into various temptations, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 Let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. 6 But let him ask in faith, without any doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed. 7 For that man shouldn’t think that he will receive anything from the Lord. 8 He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

James 1:2-8