There was a time when I was very much in love and I sailed
on the Hudson River often. After the end of that relationship, it was really
hard for me to see boats on the river or to see the bridges, or even to walk by the
river, something I loved to do before that relationship ever started. When I
moved out to where I live now, they were expanding the park area and were just
starting to complete a longer walkway along the Hudson. There were some high
rises that had gone up and more on the way. It was becoming a very chic area to
live.
I love to walk and I don’t own a car, so I walk everywhere.
When I first moved out here I was so angry at God – I’d lived in New York City
for more than 20 years, and then I was born again and I started to have so many
apartment problems and finally I couldn’t find a place I could afford. I felt
like God was punishing me for something from my past by making me move out of the city, but when I’d ask
Him why and complain and moan, He’d just say, "Look around you." At first I
thought He meant that the area was in need of ministry, so I started looking
around to see who I could help. But as I walked around and let Him lead me to
new places, I started to understand that He had blessed me by bringing me out
here. Everything is so much nicer here – the prices are cheaper, the quality of
food is better, the air is cleaner, it’s quieter, the people are nicer, and
even the Hudson River is more beautiful from here. There are some good walking
areas in Manhattan now that they’ve finally been finishing the paths along the
Hudson on that side, but there’s always so much traffic on the West Side
Highway, and so much traffic with bikers and joggers that it’s hard to take a
walk and just enjoy the view. It’s definitely not quiet, and it’s not
meditative. It might be pretty in places, but it’s so much prettier here, and
we’ve got peace and quiet even when it’s more crowded like it was yesterday.
Yesterday was a holiday, and it was a pleasant walk, but there are days that I
can walk and it’s even more peaceful.
It’s good for my head to walk like that. I walk every day to
the train station that takes me into the city when I have to go there for work,
almost two miles each way. Some people think I’m nuts to do it, but my head is
so much clearer. On days when I am worried or stressed, I can talk to God and
pray. On other days I can praise and worship, singing as I walk. On days when
the weather is bad I can still get my exercise. I get restless if I don’t
exercise and I don’t sleep well without it, so even if it’s raining or snowing
I’ll still walk. The other thing that happened with my walking is that my
physical health is the best it’s been in years – maybe the best ever. I had to
have a physical a few years ago when I was the director of an after school
program. It is a requirement from the Board of Health, and I didn’t have
insurance at the time. A woman I knew from church was working in a doctor’s
office as a medical assistant, and she did the physical for me for something
crazy like $25. When she checked my blood pressure and my heart beat, she said,
“What are you doing? You’re like a teenager!” I’m adding years to my life and
quality to my life, and all because the Lord moved me out here against my will,
kicking and screaming and complaining. Why I don’t trust Him to do what’s best
for me I’ll never know.
There’s a boat that is docked in the area where I walked
yesterday that I know from many years past. I heard some men talking about
it, one of them was pointing it out to the other and telling him that people
lived on it. I know that because I know the owner. I used to know everyone on
the waterfront who was anyone. It’s a small community, and everyone knows
everyone else. I talked to that owner about living on his boat once when it was
docked on the other side of the river, but I didn’t do it. I was still working in
corporate America then, and it seemed a bit of a stretch to live on a boat in
the Hudson River and cross the Westside Highway every day to go to work. Back
in those days they were just starting to build the walkways so it wasn’t very
easy to cross the highway. It’s much easier now, but I still don’t know if I
would have done it if it had been easier then. It was only after I left the
finance industry that I started to spend more time on boats. I never lived in
one yet, but I lived in a house that was like one, and I call the apartment I
live in now my ark.
It took me a while to get used to the idea of the River
again in my new life. After the relationship I was in had ended and I was born
again, the Lord did something really beautiful. He arranged it so that the
children and teenagers in the after school program I was working with could go
sailing for free through a program that was financed by the city. He put it on
my heart to take them sailing, and I called everyone I knew from the
waterfront, but none of them had a clue as to how to make it happen. Pretty much they all said it was impossible because of rental costs and insurance and all those other things that make sailing one of the most expensive sports there is. Then one
day I was reading the New Yorker and I saw an article about a group of people
who were doing a fund raiser to help inner city school kids go sailing. I
called the company that was mentioned in the article and asked for the person
who was named and he connected me with the City Council Member who was handling
it. It was as easy as that. When God puts something on your heart, He always
gives you the way to do it if you just keep your heart and mind open and
believe it’s possible, no matter what anybody else says.
But even with that beautiful experience of seeing those kids
having the time of their lives, sailing out of the yacht club at North Cove,
sailing on the most beautiful historic ships, there was still a part of me that
was so despondent because I was looking back toward my old life and wishing I
could still have some of the things I had then. The feeling would come and go
because I knew that what I had now was so much better than what I had then, and
I wasn’t in love with the man I had been in love with any more. But there was
something like sadness that was underlying everything and I couldn’t quite get
at the root of it. There was one day when I was taking a longer walk than
usual, after I had been living where I live now for a while, and I found myself
near a marina on this side of the River that I had been through when I had been
sailing back then. As I walked around
and took in the sights and sounds and smells and emotions, as all of my senses
filled to overflowing with the past, I said to God, “I forgive him for what
happened. Why can’t I let these feelings go?” And the answer came back, very
gently as always, “Yes, but have you forgiven me?” There had been so much pain
and sorrow and devastation. I had lost everything that was dear to me during
that time. I had been betrayed and abandoned and left for practically dead by
just about everyone I knew. My life as I had known it had ended, and I had wanted
it to end entirely. And now that I was born again and was walking and talking
with God, I knew that He could have stopped it.
There are times when we are walking so far away from God
that we don’t even recognize how far away we are. I had started to live my life
in a way that had nothing redeeming about it. God had tried to get my attention
over and over again, and I’d look up once in a while from my own self-centered pursuits,
but never fully recognized who it was that was calling me. By the time my house
of cards had tumbled all around me, I was so lost that it is a miracle that I
was found. There are times when the only way that God can bring us back again
is to allow us to lose everything so we have nothing left but to call out to
Him.
In Luke 15:11-32, Jesus tells the story of the Prodigal Son.
It’s one that many of us know, a son tells his father he wants his inheritance
now and goes off and squanders it on “wild living,” as the New International
Version translation tells us, or in modern day language, on drugs and alcohol
and partying, etc., and we can fill in that etc. from our own personal
experience. After he has lost everything, he ends up working in a pig sty,
feeding pigs, and there is a famine in the land so he can’t even get anything
to eat. The pigs are eating better than he is. So he decides to go back to his
father and beg him to take him in as a hired hand. And this is where it starts
to get really interesting. Verse 20 says, “But while he was still a long way
off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his
son and threw his arms around him and kissed him.” The son apologizes for what
he has done and says he’s no longer worthy to be called his son, but the father says, “Quick,
bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on
his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate.
For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” I
don’t know any parents who would do that. They might take someone back again,
and I say might because sometimes they won’t even do that, but to celebrate? To
give him the best clothes and a ring? There is only one father I know of who is
crazy enough to do that, and that is our Father in Heaven.
And that is exactly what He does do. That is exactly what He
did for me. Verse 20 begins, “But while he was still a long way off.” I was so
far away from God, and yet he came running when I finally turned back. It’s an
amazing thing that happens in the parable, and it mirrors what happened to me.
The son doesn’t repent until the father has run to him. When the son is in the
pig sty, all he is thinking about is how he might be able to get out of the pig
sty and get something to eat. Anything would be better than where he is, so he
decides to see if maybe he can find some place with his father. He doesn’t say
that he has sinned until the father has run to him and thrown his arms around
him and kissed him. It is when he is welcomed with open arms that he realizes
his own sin and that is where he begins to repent. Repentance means a turning
away from sin and a turning toward God, but although the son turns towards God,
he doesn’t begin to repent until God meets him where he is.
As I walked by the River yesterday and took in all the sights
and smells and sounds, I thought about my times on the River, and the things of
the past that I am so glad that are gone. There is a peacefulness in my life
that I have never known before, a knowledge that God is always with me, an
understanding of His love that fills the places that I once tried to fill with
other people and things that could not satisfy the longing and the yearning of
my heart. There are still things that I want in my life, there are still things
that He has put on my heart that I am still waiting for. I would say that I am
waiting patiently, but I’ve never been one who is good at patience. I will say that I know I can trust Him at His
word because He has always proved Himself faithful.
As I sat for a while and enjoyed one of the most
beautiful days I have had in a long, long time, I opened my Bible and this is
what He gave me, “Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret
to His servants the prophets.” (Amos 3:7) The chapter begins with the words, “Authority
of the Prophet’s Message,” and those were the first words I saw when I opened
my Bible. For whatever His reasons He has chosen to speak His word to me, to
let me in on His secrets. I am not anyone who is anyone, and I am the least of
my house which is the least of any house anywhere. I have never used my gifts
and talents wisely until He opened my eyes to how I had squandered everything.
And yet He still chooses to bless me by giving me His word, by sharing His
secrets, and then showing me that He is faithful to do as He has promised. He chooses to do this because that's the kind of father He is, and He will do it for you too. Just turn your head a little in His direction, and He'll come running straight to you.
Blessings,Jannie Susan
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