Four years. Three cancers. My world feels shaken.
But Jesus, my certain hope, endures.
Certain hope.
I love those words!
Verse 1:
When the fields are dry, and the winter is long
Blessed are the meek, the hungry, the poor
When my soul is downcast, and my voice has no song
For mercy, for comfort, I wait on the Lord
Chorus:
In the harvest feast or the fallow ground,
My certain hope is in Jesus found
My lot, my cup, my portion sure
Whatever comes, we shall endure
I wondered how to come to You,
I did not dare believe it true,
That You regard the orphaned ones:
Beloved daughters, worthy sons.
The broken and the barren, too,
I heard could find some rest in You.
What kind of love in injury’s place,
Would leave instead the stain of grace?
So I come in sorrow and I come in shame.
I come to the cross with my pain.
Just as I am, without one plea,
But that thy blood was shed for me,
And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
Jesus, King of angels, heaven’s light,
Shine Your face upon this house tonight.
Let no evil come into my dreams;
Light of heaven, keep me in Your peace.
Remind me how You made dark spirits flee,
And spoke Your power to the raging sea.
And spoke Your mercy to a sinful man;
Remind me, Jesus, this is what I am.
CHORUS:
The universe is vast beyond the stars,
But You are mindful when the sparrow falls,
And mindful of the anxious thoughts That find me,
surround me, and bind me . . . .
Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon Thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone Thee.
’Twas I, Lord, Jesus, I it was denied Thee!
I crucified Thee.
Lo, the Good Shepherd for the sheep is offered;
The slave hath sinned, and the Son hath suffered;
For man’s atonement, while he nothing heedeth,
God intercedeth.
For me, kind Jesus, was Thy incarnation,
Thy mortal sorrow, and Thy life’s oblation;
Thy death of anguish and Thy bitter passion,
For my salvation.
Desperation. Frenzy. Anxiety. Melancholy. Darkness.
These are words that describe me these past weeks since my surgery. Even in the joyous news that all my pathology came back clear, there is an unsettled gloom that hangs. I know a large part of it is just the path of recovering, and crazy medications, and new medications my body must adjust to, and old medications that have become unbalanced, and a body that has been hacked into and anesthetized once again.
But I also know a large part of it is because I am fixing my eyes here.