HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

1811 -- 1896

Dear Friends,

Do you ever get to the end of a day and realize you haven’t connected with the Lord at all? I seem to have more of those lately and while there was a time it would have produced a lot of guilt and frustration, now it just perplexes me. Why does this happen? Shouldn’t I be way past this kind of struggle? And how can I possibly experience what it means to ‘live loved’ by God, when I’m barely aware of His presence in a given day?

I could chalk it up to the crazy chaos of my life right now with 8 people living here, three under seven and the youngest being the most curious and precocious 2-year old I’ve ever seen. (My son said I should write a book about this experience called “Sacred Crisis” because the number of major mishaps multiplies exponentially with the addition of every child to a family!). But I digress.

This past week was especially full and moments of peace in God’s presence were few and far between. That is until I received a short essay from a friend (thank you Becky!) by Harriet Beecher Stowe, written in 1852. You may know that Stowe was the abolitionist who wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and was said to have been credited with starting the Civil War by Abraham Lincoln himself. Her writings sprang from her intimate relationship with Christ and her desire to impact her world on His behalf.

But in this particular work, she addressed the issue of earthly cares and how they, by their very nature, consume a large part of our human experience. Why, Stowe asks, has God ordered things this way? Why has He placed us in a world where the things that are seen and temporal must unavoidably have so much of our thoughts, and time, and care, and yet told us, “Set your affections on things above, and not on things of the earth.” Or “Love not the world, neither the things in the world?” I had never thought of it in that way, but the question made perfect sense. In other words, if God has created me for intimacy with Him, for an inner journey of communion in His presence, why does He seem to continually put me in these situations that seem tailor-made to sabotage that very thing by consuming huge chunks of my time, focus and energy?

The problem, Stowe explains, is that we don’t really believe that God is both present and purposeful in the minor details of our lives, and until we do, we will never be able to glean the spiritual blessings from them that He intends. When a major crisis comes, we know that our only hope is to look to God’s hand, to seek His face and trust that He is working even this together for our good. We throw ourselves upon Him and find there the comfort and tender care we need. But what would happen if we did the same with the ‘dailys’ -- the moment by moment worries, cares, irritations, frustrations and fears, or the weariness that often attends these things? Simply put, what if we determined to interact with God about all of these, believing fully that He has a sovereign plan in each and every thing, and that our happiness depends on seeking Him through them?

Stowe writes:

But were God in Christ known and regarded as the soul’s familiar Friend; were every trouble of the heart, as it rises, breathed into his bosom; were it felt that there is not one of the smallest of life’s troubles that has not been permitted by him, and permitted for specific good purpose to the soul, how much more heart work would there be in prayer! How constant, how daily might it become! How it might settle and clear the atmosphere of the soul! How it might so dispose and lay away many anxieties which now take up their place there, that there might be room for the higher themes and considerations of religion!