Well, Myrtle, how's your head?

Fine, if I don't move it too much!

Getting up, moving about, turning too quickly, bending over, straightening up, laying down...all of these increase my dizziness and ensuing nausea. Really, going down the stairs any other way than by your feet is not highly recommended.

Last night, I tried to eat dinner, roused my nausea, promptly threw it up, and started coughing. The nebulizer helped for a few hours, and I managed to actually sleep. But this morning I had another attack. So, out came the nebulizer and my heart started pounding once more.

I loathe those drugs. Even when I am not in the hospital, I feel so lonely when struggling to breathe and battling the fear I feel each time my heart starts racing and the drug-induced tremors start wracking my body. I tremble from the inside out; it feels so utterly frightening. As much as I dislike the ER, I want to be there so that I am at least near others.

This morning, it was really strange because I walked into our building coughing and was gasping for breath by the time I got to my own office. I was coughing and gasping so hard that I couldn't get my medication into the nebulizer. Needless to say, I was making quite a racket, but I remained all alone in my office. Because it was so bad, I went ahead and jabbed the Epipen in my leg so that I could have enough relief to start the nebulizer. Still, no one came. About an hour later, the office manager passed by, saw my paraphernalia still spread about my desk and said she thought she heard me coughing. So much for hoping help is nearby at work should I need it!

While I had arrived at work early to make up for some lost time this week, I actually sat in the parking lot talking to JW. I know, that doesn't sound like avoiding her, but we had had a long text session last night and I was worried she was offended by some of what I said. It is still much easier not talking to her than talking to her. She is still thrilled about the great lesson of my baptism. But I will admit that my godmother has this uncanny ability to make me laugh even when tears are streaming down my face. Personally, I believe she is much, much too wicked to be a godparent (not to mention that I am much, much too old to be gaining godparents), but she believes the opposite...on both counts!

This morning, she said something else that troubled my waters. The following is as near as I can remember: You are experiencing birthing pains. I do not understand why they are so strong, but that is what they are. You are being born in the Gospel, having grown up with more law than you should have found in any church. It's probably a good thing that we do not remember our births. It has to hurt the baby at least some. But we all have to be born. You need to be born.

I think, perhaps, it would be right for her to interchange Objective Grace and the Gospel.

Certainly, I learned the Gospel in church. Had I not, I would not be found! Had I not, I would not have learned that Christ came to save the world and to save me. But forgiveness and grace seemed relegated to the cross, to the past. Not meant for today. Not meant for practice amongst Christians.

Certainly I learned about Grace, but only as an obligatory lesson about what God bestows upon us in our salvation...when we do the work of accepting Christ as our Saviour. Certainly not that it is Objective Grace. The (erroneous) teaching I received is that our work is necessary, meaning...in a sense...that Christ's work on the cross was not sufficient. How can that be?

I learned all the things I needed to be doing to be a better Christian. I learned all the ways that I could make myself more holy. I learned about how I could live a more godly life so that I might become more faithful. Oh, the futile labor of trying to create and enlarge your own faith.

I did not learn that I am washed anew daily. Washed by the blood. Washed by the Spirit. Washed by the Living Word. I did not learn that while the Law crushes us in our absolute inability to keep it, the Gospel sets us free. It sets us free, not just because Christ fulfilled the law for us, but by allowing us to walk in forgiveness even though we are still sinful beings, still destined to fail.

At one point, I was telling JW of how wretched I feel about how I feel about someone, and her response was be that as it may, you are forgiven for feeling that way. Forgiveness is her litany to me. I cannot hear it enough.

Being forgiven does not mean that we are then free to sin, free to inflict our debase natures upon each other. Despite our greatest effort, we will do that anyway. But forgiveness does allows us to move beyond the sin and begin again. It is a crushing existence without forgiveness, a constant accounting of our failures being heaped upon us with no relief, no release in sight.

Not everyone is fettered by the law. Without the Holy Spirit, we cannot even fathom fear and love and trust of God. Without the Holy Spirit, we cannot even fathom the weight of our sin. But for Christians the weight of their sin can be an impossibly heavy burden if they are not also bathed in the Gospel each time they enter God's house to worship, if they are not fed the sweet honey of the Living Word and sated with the refreshing water of forgiveness.

Being bathed in the Gospel leads me back to the journey which I have been taking ever since Pastor D dropped the Book of Concord into my lap, into my life.

I have written of all parts of the Large Catechism save for the Lord's Prayer. Really and truly there is nothing that I can write that has not been written better by Luther and countless pastors since. And I will admit that some of what I have been reading and what I thought I heard from Pastor has bothered me when it comes to prayer. I would have thought, having spent 31 years clinging to Christ, that prayer was something I had down pat. Now, I am not so sure.

Nevertheless, I would highly recommend you read Luther's instruction for doing so will most certainly illuminate this perfect prayer, this gift that Christ gave us. It is a prayer that you could study for a lifetime and never learn its true riches, each petition worthy of its own lifetime of study. I believe this to be because I have come to understand that the words of this prayer, the words I memorized years ago without much thought, the words I have repeated countless times because it was time to do so in the church service or in the bible study, are actually all that we need to know about God and what He has done for us, what He does for us. To understand the Lord's Prayer is to understand God. Such knowledge cannot be contained in this fallen world. But chasing that understanding is a most worthy pursuit.

Below, I will share a few bits of the introductory text in the hopes that you might glimpse of the magnitude of this gift and be inspired to study the whole of Luther's instruction on the Lord's Prayer in the Book of Concord, Large Catechism. And then I will conclude with my thoughts on his admonition to pray the Psalms.

And the first thing to know is that it is our duty to pray because of God's commandment. For that's what we heard in the Second Commandment, "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain" (Exodus 20:7). We are required to praise that holy name and call upon it in every need, or to pray. To call upon God's name is nothing other than to pray (e.g., I Kings 18:24). (LC, Part III, 5)

[Note: It is important to remember that any prayer without the Word, without the triune God is footle natter. Those prayers are hollow words cast about into the air that have no audience, no weight, no hope. As harsh as that sounds, apart from God they are nothing.]

For by calling upon God's name and praying, His name is honored and used well. (LC, Part III, 8)

Indeed, the human heart is by nature so hopeless that it always flees from God and imagines that He does not wish or desire our prayer, because we are sinners and have earned nothing but wrath (Romans 4:15). (LC, Part III, 10)

For by this commandment God lets us plainly understand that He will not cast us away from Him or chase us away (Romans 11:1). This is true even though we are sinners. But instead He draws us to Himself (John 6:44), so that we might humble ourselves before Him (I Peter 5:6), bewail this misery and plight of ours, and pray for grace and help (Psalm 69:13). (LC, Part III, 11)

This work [prayer] is a work of obedience. What I do for no other reason that I may walk in the obedience and commandment of God. On this obedience I can settle and stand firm, and I can value it as a great thing, not because of my worthiness, but because of the commandment. (LC, Part III, 13)

God does not consider prayer because of the person, but because of His Word and obedience to it. (LC, Part III, 16)

In the second place, we should be more encouraged and moved to pray because God has also added a promise and declared that it shall surely be done for us as we pray. He says in Psalm 50:15, "Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you." And Christ says in the Gospel of St. Matthew, "Ask, and it will be given to you...for everyone who asks receives" (7:7-8). (LC, Part III, 19)

For in addition to this commandment and this promise, God expects us [to pray] and He Himself arranges the words and form of prayer for us. He places them on our lips for how and what we should pray (Psalm 51:15), so that we may see how heartily He pities us in our distress (Psalm 4:1), and we may never doubt such prayer is pleasing to Him and shall certainly be answered. (LC, Part III, 22-23)

We need to know this: all our shelter and protection rest in prayer alone. For we are far too weak to deal with the devil and all his power and followers who set themselves against us. They might easily crush us under their feet. Therefore, we must consider and take up those weapons with which Christians must be armed in order to stand against the devil (II Corinthians 10:4; Ephesians 6:11). (LC, Part III, 30-31)

Something that I have found equally strange and equally compelling is Luther's admonition to pray the Psalms. What this means exactly, I cannot tell you. I can tell you that this book of the bible is a book of prayers given to us. I have long heard that they are poems, that poetry is not always easy to understand. I have heard that David wrote them. I have heard that some we know when and others we know not. I have not, however, really heard that they are prayers.

So, how do you pray the Psalms? Again, I honestly do not know. What I do know is that in my attempts to pray the Psalms, I have taken to reading them aloud. I have just finished my third time through them. The first time, I read them in one sitting, all night long, focusing on Luther's observation that they embody the First Commandment or better yet the First Commandment embodies them. The second time I started to read them because I was so distraught, hurting so deeply, that I could not speak. I had no words. I spoke aloud David's. The third time, I set about reading them more purposely, highlighting my way through the book as I read aloud...repeating some bits over and over again before moving on...backing up when I next opened the book to read the highlights again before continuing on once more.

Everything I have tried to say about the power of the Living Word does not come close to how I feel about Scripture now, to what I have learned in my attempts to pray the Psalms. There were words the third time through I could swear were not there the first two times. There are words that I swear I could have written myself, that speak so intimately of my heart that I gasp as my mouth forms them. The words of the Psalms comfort. The words of the Psalms inspire. The words of the Psalms chasten. The words of the Psalms instruct. They are words for me. They may be for the rest of the world, for all time, but they are actually for me. They are the Word. The Word who came for me.

The Word who came for you.