Right Judgment & Beulah Land

In my last post, I mentioned my anger about situations I can't change. This has been on my mind the past few days, especially how desperately I desire grace for others.  James 4:6 states, "But He gives more grace." How I long for this, to see people not by their sins, but as image-bearers loved by God, washed clean when they trust in His Son.

We are a "doing" society, but spiritual growth is about waiting, anticipating, and trusting, like Advent. The desire is there, but I'm powerless to snap my fingers and make something happen. God's way involves time, lots of it, and slow, painful change.  This morning, I read further in James: 

"Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded." (4:8, my italics)

Cleansing my hands and purifying my heart from the past are a part of the sanctifying mind-renewal currently happening in my life.  It's not an overnight transformation, but James reminds me that it does eventually happen.  I keep asking, and God keeps working beyond my comprehension.  There is comfort in the fact that He does it, and I don't need to understand. I needed the reminder that I am, indeed, double-minded.  My friend Christina says that a pastor-friend of hers calls it, "dancing with the old skeletons in your closet." James takes it a step further: "He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways" (1:8). The solution?  Back to the verse in pink: be desperate and cry out to God to cleanse me and purify my heart.

As the Lord would have it, a new Advent theme starts today for this week in The Cloud of Witness: Right Judgment. There is this lovely prayer for the week:

"Grant us by Thy Holy Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in His holy comfort." (page 19)

We ask, and He puts the right ideas before us, whether through Scripture, readings, sermons, or an apt word from others. Here is a stanza from a poem called "Compensation" by Frances Ridley Havergal, which is a selection from my Cloud reading today:

"How shall we judge their present, we who have never seen
That which is past for ever, and that which might have been?
Measuring by ourselves, unwise indeed are we!
Measuring what we know by what we can hardly see." 

My prayer today is that I would trust Christ to do the measuring of all things.  His barometer is accurate; mine is flawed. That He would cleanse my hands and purify my heart, enabling me to rest in His perfect judgment of myself and others!

On another note....
Today is the fourth anniversary of my husband's dear Granny Beulah leaving this world for Heaven. She was an integral part of my salvation, used by God directly to give me understanding of the Gospel through her country church in Greenville, SC. In 2003, she had moved up to the mountains, and we enjoyed many days of laughter, crying, and simple living together.  

Granny Beulah was born in the mountains of Cocke County, Tennessee, in May of 1926. She had two sons, one being my father-in-law, the other killed on Christmas Eve, 1971, by a drunk driver. I noted that God saw fit to usher her into His presence and reunite her with her beloved son, Harold, exactly almost forty years after his death. 

Beulah in younger days, 1943

Memories of Granny Beulah include boiled cabbage and turnip greens, stories of "Daddy," who was "Doc Fish" (the area vet and people-doctor), a shabby Bible, trips with her church group, games of Skip-Bo, McDonald's fillet o-fish sandwiches and fries, hymns sung high-pitched, tea so sweet it made you thirsty, and hours of game shows ("You ever watch that 'Millionaire'?").  Her house, and later her room at my in-laws,' was vintage and comfortable; not fancy, just inviting. She loved stuffed animals, and could hem or fix a pair of pants perfectly in no time. She had all day to spend doing important things, like loving her family.

Granny, thanks for your love and attention. Those from your generation are fast leaving us, and we will soon know no more like you. What a privilege to have had you as my own grandmother. I delight in knowing that you are in Beulah Land!