A Lamp Unto My Feet and a Light Unto My Path

Finding My Father in His Word

A note about this post:

If you read my last blog post, you may remember that, just before publishing it, I had added a postscript telling the story of how I was Providentially led to finally finish the essay and share it. Well, here’s the story of what Providentially happened next. . .

Right after I clicked the “publish” button, I checked my email and discovered an invitation had just landed in my inbox. It was from one of my pastors, asking if I’d be willing to speak at a large church event that was scheduled for the end of June. The topic would be some facet of my relationship with the Lord, and he said he was asking me because he’d read some of my blog essays and thought I might have something useful to share. In the spirit of that moment, hearing the call, of course I said “yes!”

And this past weekend, the event (we call an “Assembly”) was held, a gathering of nearly a thousand people from all over the globe. On a paradisally mild, sunny Friday morning, I stood in front of 600+ fellow church members and shared a bit of my spiritual journey. Posted below is the talk I gave, for any interested readers.

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

In one of my earliest memories I am three years old, kneeling with my family at bedtime, reciting the Lord’s Prayer and feeling so proud and full of wonder that He’s given me a special mention: “And Leah’s not in temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

I can still remember how seen and loved by Him I felt in that moment. 

And yet, He was a distant God to me — a faraway ruler I needed to obey. A remote idea rather than a loving human — the loving Human.

That remained true until thirty years later when I finally cracked open the Secrets of Heaven, which is to say, I began reading the Arcana Coelestia, starting at the beginning. It was in volume two that I finally saw my Heavenly Father, and that soul-shaping experience is why I call the Arcana The Mercy Books. 

For context, I was raised by devout New Church parents, here in the mecca of the General Church, and graduated from all our church schools, including the college. So it wasn’t that I didn’t know who the Lord was in His Second Coming. I’d researched in the Writings, written papers, heard sermons galore. I knew He was Love Itself, Wisdom Itself, Mercy Itself — I’d heard it all a thousand times in my upbringing and education. 

Yet my relationship with Him was essentially a collection of ideas that reduced to rules about how to live, do’s — and especially don’ts — which I tried to follow. But as to any sense of His presence personally leading me in my life, He remained a concept. A paper god.

Until the Arcana. There, amazingly, I felt the touch of the Lord’s Humanity, felt the reach of His mercy into my heart. And it was such a stark contrast to the unyielding weight and sharp edges of the doctrinal truths I knew that it revealed to me a hardness in my heart, callouses that had formed through my rigid understanding of His truths. How perfect, paradoxical, and Providential then, that my paper god became a Human One within those very pages of His new revelation. 

And to be really precise, in the word bend. 

I was reading the Potts translation, and that word pops up early — number 50 is the first hit. But passage 1992 is the one that really struck me, and stuck:

the Lord by no means desires to destroy suddenly. . . the worship that has been inseminated in anyone from his infancy; for this would be to tear up the root, and thereby destroy the holy state of adoration and of worship that has been deeply implanted, and which the Lord never breaks, but bends. The holy state of worship, that has been rooted in from infancy is of such a nature that it cannot endure violence, but only a gentle and kindly bending. 

The Lord never breaks, but bends. 

In those words, I finally caught clear sight of my Father and I was awed by the depths of His tenderness towards His children. I knew I was glimpsing His very essence. As a mother of young children, who often felt besieged by my controlling impulses, my flimsy patience stretched to the breaking point, this gifted me a vision of the Lord that moved me — literally. This exquisitely gentle Father was someone I felt called to lean on, to emulate. One I wanted to follow with my whole heart and soul. Who I knew would make my heart and soul whole. I hung on to that sacred image like a lifeline.

Years later, the New Testament provided me a similarly powerful experience of the Lord’s humanity. 

During the Covid lockdowns I started reading the Four Gospels, beginning with Matthew. I was looking for hope and comfort. A way to hold the loss of normal life and my shaken confidence in our future wellbeing. I figured the example of Jesus might help clear my vision, restore my soul.

Maybe it’s the times we’re living in of perpetual screen-mediated drama, or maybe it’s just me having never read all the Gospel narratives beginning to end, back to back, but my experience was to see the Lord’s life play out in my mind’s eye in Oscar-worthy, cinematic splendor — like watching an IMAX so compelling it sucks you into the action and keeps you riveted even though you know the ending. More than anything, that vividness brought to life for me how real the Lord was — and is — as a human being. It got me thinking about the actual experience of His miracles, and their impact, and how profoundly He changed the lives of the people who followed Him in this world. Which got me thinking about how profoundly He changes the lives of people who follow Him today — when we open ourselves to His instruction on how to follow, how to love. 

In the midst of the pandemic, with its painful uncertainty and upheaval, I felt strengthened witnessing the constancy of the Lord’s love for humanity, the willingness with which He became one of us, walked the path of salvation ahead of us, clearing the way for us through torturous combats far beyond our ability to fathom, to secure our ability to connect with Him. Seeing the sacrificial spirit of His Divine Humanity deepened my trust that good things are born through adversity. That in the Lord’s Providence, loss and sorrow are seasons, not endpoints. As He told us in the book of John: 

Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you.             Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

In the years since the pandemic I’ve moved on to the Old Testament, which does not lack for drama, as you know. But I’ll confess, its narrative hasn’t touched me as dramatically as did the other two revelations. It also hasn’t added profoundly to my vision of the Lord’s Humanity. It has, however, deepened my awareness of a crucial and comforting truth about the Lord. 

Reading through the Children of Israel’s tumultuous history, my biggest take away has been how patiently persistent the Lord is in His call to follow Him, to forsake other gods — those things I prioritize that come between me and Him. . . which are a lot of things. A clear message I glean from the literal text is that, like those recalcitrant Israelites, I can be equally persistent in forgetting Him, dismissing Him, resisting Him, and things will eventually fall apart on me and He will still be there, waiting until I’m ready to listen and return to Him. I hear in these stories His unbroken promise that whenever I do center Him in my life and heart, He will lead me out of whatever hell I’ve created for myself if only I’m willing to keep at the basics: live by His commandments and do my best to run from the impulses and habits of mind that pull me off that path. 

So, despite the exhausting fickleness of the Children of Israel, reading their repetitious story of stubbornness, pride, and stupidity has magnified my awareness of the Lord dwelling in the background despite my own stubbornness, pride, and stupidity. I can work with Him or against Him, but He never gives up or abandons me. And in coming to see and accept how perfectly present He is with me, I feel it getting easier and easier to lean into Him, to let go of my fears, to relax out of my posture of trying to manage the people and events around me, or of even wishing I could.

To end, I’d like to share a favorite quote from each Testament of the three-fold Word, to honor the fact that, truly, it has been a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. These are from Arcana 1950, Matthew 5, and Joshua 1:

Rational good never fights, however it is assailed; because it is mild and gentle, patient and yielding; for its character is that of love and mercy. Yet although it does not fight, it conquers all….

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.