Good morning…
“I don’t know exactly why or even when the idea came to me that I should keep a ledger on deep-felt thoughts,” writes Betty Skinner the heroine of our semester’s book, who is gracefully celebrating her 94th birthday today. “I have experienced that on one level, in matters of the heart, we are all alone, isolated, and unable to communicate with others, even those we love very dearly. Our tears, our gifts, our hurt, our heartache, our depressions, our decisions, our uncertainties, our good, and yes, our evil thoughts are all incommunicable. We cannot speak them or write them down. Yet I know that God has placed within me a hunger, a longing to communicate, to share, to give, to serve, to love. In desperation I turned to Him, for He seemed to understand and listen. So it was that I began to build a ‘life hid with Christ in God.’ This then might well be called ‘My Hidden Life.'”
How do I build this hidden life?
By bringing to God each day,
My tears, my troubles, my defeats, and my ruins.
And while I groan God builds,
Patiently, secretly, silently deep within me
The invisible, the unshakeable foundations. (Crenshaw and Snapp’s The Hidden Life Awakened, 47)
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock” (Matthew 7:24-25, NIV).
As we groan God patiently, secretly, silently builds the invisible, unshakable foundations of our hidden life.
…Sue…
P.S. Happy birthday, dear Betty. We thank you so deeply for inspiring us to chisel deep into the rock to build our own “life hid with Christ in God.” As we groan God quietly builds an invisible, unshakable foundation within our soul.
