The Secret Garden

Chapter Five. I am not even finished reading it. Ann - I won't add her last name anymore, she feels like an old friend now - is talking about going deeper in her understanding of thanksgiving, eucharisteo, into what she aptly terms "hard eucharisteo." What to give thanks for when, from the human perspective, it all just looks bad. When the going gets tough. When we need the Eternal God perspective.

John 16:33 says "In the world ye shall have tribulation..." I know my time for gut-wrenching, brutal loss, sadness, and trials will come. I will have tribulations. Ye shall have. Not IF, WHEN. But that time has not come for me yet.

So, as I pondered hard eucharisteo, I asked God, what does this mean for me now?

And then I went to church. Our beloved local body of congregating saints and

GOD ANSWERED.

Not all hard eucharisteo is because of circumstances He calls us to walk through, sometimes it is the posture He calls us to assume.

Pastor Geoff spoke on Isa. 66:2, "...but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor (humble) and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word."

This posture of the heart, this draws the gaze of the All Mighty Who inhabits eternity. Humility, humbleness, being set low willingly.

But I am strong, and brave and intelligent, not humble. My flesh rises, indignant, that this is what God wants. But God knows my pride, knows that I have forgotten my place. He has reminded me in 66:1, heaven is His throne, not mine. Me, where I dwell, this is just His footstool. BE HUMBLE.

There is crumpled, worn and faded piece of paper in my bedside drawer. It has been with me half my life. This poem is written on it. This poem, that somewhere on my journey I stopped reading because it was just too hard. Right now, THIS IS MY HARD EUCHARISTEO.

And God be praised - For the first time in years, I look at the necessity of dying to self and say, with tears welling in my eyes, God, YOU ARE A GOOD GOD, AND EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING YOU CALL ME TO IS GOOD. It is your banner over me: Love; the very essence of the goodness of God.

DYING TO SELF (anonymous)

When you are forgotten, neglected, or purposely set at naught, and you don't sting or hurt with the oversight, but your heart is happy being counted worthy to suffer for Christ;

That is dying to self.

When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinion ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart or even defend yourself, but take it all in patient, loving silence;

That is dying to self.

When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any irregularity, any annoyance; when you can stand face to face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility, and endure it as Jesus did;

That is dying to self.

When you are content with any food, and offering, any raiment, any climate, any society, any solitude, any interruption by the will of God;

That is dying to self.

When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation or record your own good works or itch after commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown;

That is dying to self.

When you can see your brother prosper and have his needs met, and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy, nor question God, while your own needs are far greater and you are in desperate circumstances;

That is dying to self.

When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself and can humbly submit, inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart;

That is dying to self.
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I used to wonder how anyone could really, honestly walk this way. I have found the doorway, behind the years of tangled vines, to this secret garden. It is thanksgiving. And the key? Yes, it is the God-perspective He gives in His Word. Yes, He makes a way.