Song of the month: Never Once:  by Matt Redman

My dead poet post for the month is my all time favorite dead woman preacher, poet, rescuer of Children, writer…

Miss Amy Charmichael….applause…..Thank you Amy for guest posting for me this month. Happy fourth of July…..even though you were an Irish woman living in India in 1895, just over a hundred years after our first declaration of independence …still, it’s a happy fourth for you too cause you got rid of all us rowdy Americans from your once cramped, yet beautiful, rainy, scone-scrumptious  continent.

This post is an excerpt from another book of Amy’s called Gold by Moonlight, pp175-176….But I’m pulling it from a fab. devotional called I Come Quietly to Meet You, (I know, just the title alone makes you all peaceful and snuggly!)  which is a compilation of some of Amy’s best works arranged by David Hazard….Your awesome too David…but not sure if you are dead like Amy.

Ok here it is……..ready?….

ThereFore I Will Not Fear…

God is… 

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea…(Amy likes to use dots…like me…but I like hers better…) 

The Lord Almighty is with us, the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Psalm 46:1-2,7

Once more, today, I hide my heart within the One who is our Refuge and Strength, “an every present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1)

Therefore (most blessed word!) therefore I will not fear…

I have seen a picture of two stone pines, on the rocky face of a mountain, so torn and ragged from the powerful gusts of wind and yet so resolutely rooted. A broken tree is not beautiful, but  it shows us—God’s “children in the dark storm” —which man or woman will stand, unshaken, in the Morning…

There are always two pines on the mountainside of life. Wind can blow dust in the eyes, but that dust will not blind us: “…yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another” (Job 19:26-27).

What will it be like to see Him whom I have known so long, but never seen? To adore His beauty; to worship Him in holiness? What will it be like to see Him crowned with glory and honor, who was wounded, bruised, oppressed and afflicted for me? What will it be like to see Him and not another, not the stranger?

What will it be like…to see with new eyes, to hear with new ears, to know no more in part, but to know even as we are known? (1Corinth.13:12).

What will it be like, when faith and hope fade out of sight— and only Love is left? What will it be like?

For now, we do not know. Only this we know: The struggle and fight and sufferings of our journey are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us—in you and me!—even though  we may feel we are the least of all God’s redeemed children (Romans 8:18).

It is the Blessed One, and no other, who stands by us on the lonely mountain when the dark storm descends. (O my Lord, if you had not suffered, how should you help  me in suffering now?) And He who suffered and overcame will grant us also to overcome.

I can  think of no truer picture of what we want to be when the wind beats on us for the last time: like that lone mountain pine, broken and battered perhaps, but not uprooted!

We can stand, today and always, steadfast, undefeated. And never alone.

…and then come her prayers at the end of the devotional…I love to hear other people pray…It’s kinda like listening to two really cool, smart people talk together, I always learn something, probably cause I’m not talking for once….so her prayer, here it is..

My Father, some days, much of my personal world seems to be shaking, and no one else even knows…But you know.

Thank you,Father, that when I root myself in you it doesn’t matter, even if darkness, comes and my whole private world “gives way”…for I know we’ll be standing strong…together..and the Morning is on its way!

I could have prayed my own version of that prayer many times…I have…But when I look over Amy’s life I’m amazed at her ability to pray like this. Especially in a day where we as Christians don’t endure very long under the pressure of pain…both emotionally and physically.

Amy spent her whole life single when she was very much alive and wanting to get married…but she endured and found a way to pray prayers like this.

Amy was a athletic girl…although she might not like me bragging about her.  Her greatest joy came from hiking God’s planet and finding Him in every blade of grass and silly stink bug…but she was bed ridden much of her life.

She was a woman who SAW…and she wrote what she saw and lived what she saw.

She was the real deal and you see it in the honesty of her writing. Her ministry to children sold into temple prostitution  was not a happy, victory filled work, but hard, tiring, and often haunting, with little or no thanks.

Well…Thank you Miss Amy Charmichael. Thank you for choosing to stand in a power not your own. Thank you for not giving up the fight, compromising and giving a future generation of woman something to look to the mountains for.

I hear you loud and clear sista, “We can stand, today and always, steadfast, undefeated. And never alone.”

I know your father has been taking you on some awesome walks. I know your groom has fulfilled your every longing and I know it all makes so much sense to you now.

Well perhaps if she has time, Amy will Guest for me again. But for now  remember,

‘We can stand, today and always, steadfast, undefeated. And never alone.”