“Whatever is chasing you — no matter what it looks like — it’s grace.
And grace isn’t what makes us feel good: grace is all that makes us more like Jesus …
And nothing can overwhelm me — like grace can overtake me.
No matter when you look over your shoulder, that’s what you find: God’s blessings overtaking you. No matter what a day, a life, looks like, this is what it all stacks up to for every person on the planet: We are all chased by grace.
No matter what is hounding, the hound of heaven is closer — His warm breath of blessing right there on the nape of my neck.”
– Ann Voskamp
As I read the above words I thought of how ‘hounded’ I was feeling that particular day.
Hounded was I by the pressures of relationships, and bills, and work, and making dinner, and seeking the location of just one ibuprofen to take the edge off this pounding headache.
Her words made my eyes fill, and their banks refused to hold the flood back … the dams burst, the water fell.
Later I sought the The Hound of Heaven … the poem I had a vague knowledge of once reading. It was written in the late 1800’s by English writer Francis Thompson. Mr. Thompson had studied to become a priest, then a physician, then lived in terrible poverty (as a writer) where he survived by selling matches. He then suffered with the constant pain of neuralgia, which he treated with laudanum (containing opium), eventually becoming addicted. He last years were spent in a monastery, where he was cared for by friends.
The first link I opened to read the poem, The Hound of Heaven, made the dams burst in another way … tears of joy.
I read the ode, allowing the pursuits to settle on my heart and mind. The pursuits that we make for ‘more’ of this world, and the never-ending pursuit of God for his child.
When I came to the end of the verses, there followed yet more verses … this time written by David …
“O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.
You hem me in—behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, [a] you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
… the words of Psalm 139 … the words I have been hiding in my heart for months, as though ‘I’ had anything to do with it … as though those words were chosen for me, for such a time as this. As though those words were the instrument of the Hound himself. He who is willing to use whatever means possible to draw us back to Him.
“Whatever is chasing you — no matter what it looks like — it’s grace.
And grace isn’t what makes us feel good: grace is all that makes us more like Jesus …
And nothing can overwhelm me — like grace can overtake me.
No matter when you look over your shoulder, that’s what you find: God’s blessings overtaking you. No matter what a day, a life, looks like, this is what it all stacks up to for every person on the planet: We are all chased by grace.
No matter what is hounding, the hound of heaven is closer — His warm breath of blessing right there on the nape of my neck.”
– Ann Voskamp
itsawonderfilledlife 