Christ be praised!  I actually slept without nightmares or night terrors last night.  Personally, I believe a decision for closure was a good one, but perhaps it was because I fell asleep reciting the letters of the Greek alphabet.

Crazy, still, I believe, for me to think this is possible.  Despite how much I try to talk about this, no one will really listen, will really actually talk about the cognitive loss with me.  Reading the book on cognitive dysfunction and MS has been a balm in fellowship, but has also truly disturbed me.  Wretched disease!

Because I am so...well...dubious about actually being able to study once more, a language no less since three years of French left me knowing one word:  oui...I had yet to start my homework as of late this afternoon.  Frankly, I suspect the only hope of learning Greek will be to study, seriously, each day.  However, mostly, yesterday and today, I have slept.

While it grieves me to have missed the Lord's Supper, I was thankful that I slept so long...sixteen hours!  I did dream, one in particular was about a baby I was watching who lived in a book.  I kept trying to figure out how to feed her.  When I went to show someone, I kept flipping the pages of the book, but could not find the one which had a window to her cradle.  Strange.

When I awoke, I mostly watched DVDs, played a cognitive puzzle game, and avoided my Greek homework quite studiously.

And then I had another opportunity to look forward, rather than back.  It was hard and awkward and rather rewarding, again to the praise of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is merciful to me despite being that chief of sinners of late.

So, I have been spending the better part of the last four hours trying to learn both the sounds and the forms of the lower case letters of the Greek alphabet.  I can pronounce the name of each letter and say them in order, but now comes the hard part!  You know what I believe will be my downfall, my Achilles heal?  The long vowel "e" equivalent is actually pronounced "ay".  Why couldn't it have been "ee"?  SIGH.

Tomorrow, I shall begin to tackle the hardest part of the homework:  a paragraph has been written in the English equivalent of the Greek (looks like gibberish) that I have to translate into the Greek.  Oh, joy!  Frankly, I tried one work and nothing happened within my brain.  So, it is back to studying formation and pronunciation. 

Here's a lovely little bit from Pastor E's homily from Wednesday on my beloved Psalter:

As a deer pants for flowing streams,
so pants my soul for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.
When shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”
These things I remember,
as I pour out my soul:
how I would go with the throng
and lead them in procession to the house of God
with glad shouts and songs of praise,
a multitude keeping festival.

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.

My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
I say to God, my rock:
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning
because of the oppression of the enemy?”
As with a deadly wound in my bones,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me all the day long,
“Where is your God?”

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.   ~Psalm 42

What are your longings? What do you desire? The sinful flesh is curved in on itself; even the good things we desire are tainted with selfishness and pride. Anger and shame, grief and discontent, cause unholy longings to well up within us.

But the prayer of the Church is what Ps. 42 gives us: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.” The Psalmist longs for God, Elohim. We have entered Book II of the Psalter, and one characteristic of Book II is the reference to Elohim, “God,” in place of Yahweh, the name of God revealed to Moses at the burning bush. The Lutheran Study Bible describes Book I of the Psalter as “Intensely personal psalms of David,” with Book II being more general and nationalistic psalms. Yet Ps. 42 also conveys an intensely personal experience – the longing for God while suffering affliction.

He is parched for God, but the water God gives is not for drinking: “All your breakers and your waves have gone over me.” First God assails him, and then it seems as though God has forgotten altogether. The Psalmist asks what every human asks in time of trial: WHY?

Yet he knows why. And you know why too. We suffer because we are sinners; we die because of Adam’s sin and the sins we have added thereto. And we also know the resolution to our sin-and-death problem. The Psalmist has found it in the temple, the House of God, and we likewise have found it there. He remembers going, even leading the procession into the Old Testament church.

“You know all this,” the Psalmist says to himself, “so why are you cast down?” “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?” He is depressed, but the term in Hebrew describes a literal depression: something sunk down, into an excavation or reservoir, and thus melting away and dwindling. When something is literally cast down, it descends to death, sinking down into the grave.

When our Hebrew fathers in the faith put the Hebrew Bible into Greek, they rendered “cast down” with a word that means “very sad, deeply grieved.” And here, my dear brothers and sisters, is a direct connection to Jesus, our Lord and our God. Jesus uses the word from this Psalm to describe Himself when praying in Gethsemane: “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death” (Mt. 26.38). Do you ever get depressed, or even suffer from depression? The Lord JESUS was depressed even unto death, and thus He knows all your woe and how best to save you.

On the negative side of this depression, the same word describes the feeling of Herod, when he realizes the drunken promise he made to his wife has committed him to the beheading of John the Baptist. And it’s the feeling of the Rich Young Ruler, who goes away distraught because he is unwilling to do what Jesus commanded him. Likewise it describes the anger of Cain when his offering is refused while Abel’s is accepted.

What is the answer to his depression? He already knows. “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him.” “Hope in God” is literally “Wait to God.” Oh, how impatient we can be! The Holy Spirit in this Psalm exhorts us to patiently wait, expecting a final resolution to the difficulty.

That is the meaning of Christian hope: waiting for God’s certain salvation. It is different from all our earthly hopes. The things in this world I hope for have no basis for certainty. They are merely wishes in my heart. Christian hope is not like that. It is certain. Firm. It expects God’s solution, confident it will come, even though now it is not yet seen.

I shall again praise him, “the salvation of my face,” is what the original says. The Psalmist wants his face to be before God’s face. The worship encounter with God in the Old Testament was personal, tangible in the tabernacle with its sacrifices and showbread, incense and lights, and priestly blessing.

For us, the encounter with God is more tangible still – Christ gives us His very body to eat and His precious blood to drink, we in Him and He in us.

So when you are depressed, when your soul is downcast, when the waves are breaking over you and it seems as though God has forgotten you, wait patiently for your God. Confess Him as your Savior. He has already provided for your deliverance on the cross, and He will deliver you in due season. He is the God your life, and He will never forget you, for He has graven you in the palms of His hands.

How amazing is it that God gave us these prayers, that Christ prayed them first, and that He prays them for us still?

I am truly humbled by such a thought.

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, 

he gave the right to become children of God.  ~John 1:12

6.  JESUS MAKES US CHILDREN OF GOD

We were, in a sense, orphans.  Jesus felt compassion for us because we were "helpless, like sheep without a shepherd" (Matthew 9:36b).  When we were lost and confused in our sin, He came into our lives and adopted us.

Being a child of God means that we have Him to guide us, protect us, and care for us, just as any good father does.  It also means that we are transformed—as we spend time with our Father, we adopt His holiness, His fierce kindness, His love.  There's no greater privilege than to be a child of God.

Lutheran doctrine note:  We should be careful to remember that we "adopt" those things only because the Holy Spirit is working the Living Word into our lives, into our very being.  We do not become holy on our own or are kind or love; these are all fruits of the faith that is given to us, bought by the cross and brought by the Holy Spirit, that are born out in us despite our fallen, sinful nature.  On our own, we are wretched still; as children of God, we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ and are,  thus, transformed.


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!