Heard

 

“A song of ascents. Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD; Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.” – Psalm 130:1-2

I kept reciting those words today. Stuck on repeat. Like a crazy person grasping at straws grasping for… I don’t really know what. Not relief, not deliverance, maybe just acknowledgement. I know with every functioning neuron in my brain that God is attentive to His children’s cry, but sometimes my heart wants to feel heard, seen, acknowledged. I caught myself telling The Lord, “You said, Your sheep know Your voice and they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice. (John 10:4-5)… but do You recognize my voice from a billion other voices? Even when it breaks on Your Name? Is my voice grating, like a petulant child that You just want to shut up or…?” and before I could finish my thought, I remembered Kasatka and Takara. Two orcas in captivity at a Sea world park. Kasatka is the mother and Takara is the calf. The park decided to separate them and moved Takara to another park in Florida. While they were loading up Takara and carrying her away, Kasatka, the mother, began to wail. In fact, the vocals she made have never been heard before and the park had to bring in the senior research scientists to analyse the vocals. They were low range vocals that no one had ever heard before in an attempt to locate her calf and communicate with it. I remembered the exact scene in the documentary, (Blackfish) because I thought it was heartbreaking. And it suddenly hit me. If an orca will go to such lengths to reach her calf, my God, my Lord, my Father, is infinitely stronger and more determined than an orca to reach me. My Father rides across the heavens to help me, as soon as He hears, He answers me, whether I understand it or not.

“There is no one like the God of Jeshurun, who rides across the heavens to help you and on the clouds in his majesty.” Deuteronomy 33:26

“How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you.” – Isaiah 30:19

My Father doesn’t make low range vocals to get me to understand He’s with me, but He uses everything at His disposal to let me know He’s with me. Every image I’ve ever seen, every word I’ve ever heard, every book I’ve ever read, a rock, a flower, a star, nothing is off limits. He uses everything to let me know I’m loved.

“In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from your sight!” Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help.” – Psalm 31:22

 

By Cristina Pop

Incoherent

 

What kind of love is this love of Yours, Lord? Eternity will not be enough for me to grasp it even if You give me a different mind, complete and pure and unaltered by sin and evil, I still don’t know that I’ll get You. Maybe that’s why all Your angels are stuck on repeat, ‘holy, holy, holy!’ because there’s nothing else to conclude while observing You. In my current state, with all my biases and misconceptions is there any wonder all my assertions of You fall short? And what verbal masterpiece can I possibly concoct that will even scratch the surface or won’t end up vapidly trying to articulate what others have already failed to say. Even if I focus all my mental powers and affections in one spot -- to praise You, it sounds like empty flattery at best.

 Should I tell You that You are great? What does an ant know about the magnitude of a mountain? Should I tell You, I’m in awe of You? Is that even the right word for this mental, emotional, physical state of something that resembles terror, but it’s intermingled with affection; that it wants to dance before You like a careless king did and at the same time wants to hide in a hole deeper than Mariana trench? Should I tell You that You’re worthy? I never knew the true worth of anything until it was too late. I still mistake what glitters for gold. My value system is all a skew, how can I possibly say ‘worthy’ in any meaningful way? And if I do, will You see beyond all the absurdity, that punny trembling intention that just wants to convey that I treasure You? That I’m grateful… so very grateful.

So, You see, Lord, I’m at a loss. So, I’ll just sit here, dumb and overwhelmed and reverent. I’ll appeal to Your Omniscience to make sense of it all.

 

Cristina Pop

My name

 

Some of Jesus’ words hit me more than others. For instance, when He tells the pharisees, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” (Matthew 16:2-3) I’ve made it my business interpreting the signs of times, not in eschatological sense, but concerning my own walk with God. I still get it wrong just as many times as any meteorologist, but for the most part I know the proper conditions that can bring about a storm or a sunny day.

Knowing in advance that I would be facing weather I’ve never seen before, I’ve prepared. I wrote notes and letters to myself for a time I knew I’d need them because I knew I wouldn’t listen to anyone but myself. Today I started going through them. Here’s one:

“When the unthinkable happens, remember Daniel. He was a child when taken into captivity in Babylon, you’re a grown woman. He was taken against his will into a place that had all the potential to break the spirit of even the most hardened warrior. He hadn’t made a choice to be in those circumstances anymore than you have chosen to be where you are. Daniel and his 3 friends had nothing, and their new masters wanted them to know they had nothing. That not even their own names belonged to them, so they changed their names.

Daniel – GOD IS MY JUDGE- became, Belteshazzar - Bel (Babylonian god) protect the king.

Hannaniah – THE LORD IS GRACIOUS- became, Shadrach – command of Aku (Babylonian god).

Mishael – WHO IS LIKE THE LORD- became, Meshach – who is what Aku is.

Azariah – THE LORD IS MY HELPER – became, Abed Nego – servant of Nego/ Nebo (Babylonian god).

Your name might be changed too. You might be called depressed, hopeless, useless, anything but what you are. It’s up to you if you’ll forget your name too.

The enemy is cunning. He stops at nothing when it comes to humiliating the one who trusts in God. He might burn down your house and drag you in chains into a new reality you’ll hate. He can turn a prince into a slave, he can brain wash one with all the Babylonian nonsense, he can tread over everything you hold sacred, and he will. He can try to feed you things that would defile you and he can even change your name, so that you’ll forget God is on your side and part of who you are. But REMEMBER Daniel. None of that mattered to him. He never called himself Belteshazzar. Others called him that. He refused to acknowledge Bel as part of his identity. He was always Daniel, so much so that when Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, talks about him he has to acknowledge both his names, “At last Daniel came in before me—he who was named Belteshazzar after the name of my god,”(Daniel 4:8). And again, “Then Daniel, whose name was Belteshazzar…” (Daniel 4:19). Even though the enemy tried to blot out the Name of God from his identity by changing his name, even if they tried to call him with the name of an idol, Daniel remained Daniel. Not because he was seeking to impress anybody, but God was too embedded into his psyche. Nothing they could have tried would have changed that. And they tried it all. Daniel was Daniel. Resolutely. Stubbornly. Humbly. Daniel was Daniel.

When Belshazzar is king of Babylon and he calls for Daniel (Daniel 5:13), he doesn’t even bother with the fowl name, it never stuck anyway. When the Persians take over, king Darius doesn’t call him anything other than Daniel.

You might never return ‘home’ this side of heaven. Everything will be different from here on out. You’ll hate it. He’ll try his worse to hit you while at your weakest and you might be tempted to give in. When that happens, remember you have Christ in your name. You don’t need to start a rebellion in Babylon, just don’t let him take your name. The One who watched over Daniel in his captivity will watch over you.” - written on 26th of March, 2023

I really need to learn how to comfort in a gentler manner, sigh…

By Cristina Pop