Malachi, Mondays, and the Love of the Lord

Monday was a bad day.

I have some strong social anxiety that makes it really had for me to feel comfortable in groups of people. Add on top of that the pain I feel in those situations as I remember a time in my life where I wasn’t like that, and I don’t know what has caused this. Add to that, that the only place I have felt comfortable in the past few years has been my Institute and events are in process that are making it feel a lot less like I am welcome there. Add to that some stresses that are compiling at work and add to some significant emotional pain caused by hosting a Chosen watching party on Sunday that no one showed up to, in the time I had I watched a show and movie I had been wanting to watch. If I had thought about the themes of these videos, had I would not have watched them cause the first one focused on being abandoned by people that should have been there for you and the second was a love story which always seem to remind me how alone I am. Throw all of that in a blender and it makes for a fairly uncomfortable Janson.

Then comes Monday where my stake has a family home evening planned. There was a poster I saw at the institute about it, I copied down the address and the time, though I wrote the time down wrong, and decided to go. I see it is in a part of town that I have not spent much time in, So I plug the address to my phone and it takes me to the town city hall (where the activity is not at) frustrated at the people who could not be bothered to put the right address on the poster I remember that they had done the same thing last year and that it was actually at a park in the area. So I drove around until I found a large group of young adults and figured this was it. I parked and walked over and talked to the one person I knew there and then it began to rain. I then moved under the pavilion like thing there to stop getting any more wet. The DJ was playing music in there so loud I could not hear myself think let along hold much of a conversation with other people. Among the few people that conversation was attempted with were a happy couple that bummed me out, a girl it hurts to be around, and the 2 presidents that are taking over my calling in the institute. After 50 mins I left the activity feeling incredibly uncomfortable and really quite down in the dumps.

I decided I didn’t want my whole night to continue in Sadsville so I went to the store to get some stuff to make a meal I kind of wanted. When I got to the store, I wasn’t feeling much like making that meal anymore but headed into the store anyway. Just before I got to the door, I looked up an saw a rainbow in the sky. This hit pretty hard as I remembered a poem, I had written some time before literally entitled rainbows on a rainy day.

Looking for rainbows on a rainy day;

A spot of color in a world of gray.

It may not send the clouds away

And the color of it may not long stay.

But it brings hope in a special way

And my hard heart it may forever sway.

If in gloom I can truly say

I look for rainbows on a rainy day.

After reminding myself of that I tried to start looking for other rainbow in my day. I went to a Sushi restaurant for dinner and decided to not be so sad and it helped.

It didn’t fix the underlying sad feeling I was having though, and they kept creeping back into my heart. What I should have done was take some time and look at those feeling and work through them with God and prayer. What I did do what dig into scripture so much that I didn’t have any room left in my mind to feel those things. This was an odd choice at best, unwilling to turn to God and get my problem fixed I turned to Gods word to drown out my sadness? Seems counter intuitive… But that is what I did.

I spent the last 3 days filling every waking moment with trying to find out if Malachi is Ezra. I spent time in the Talmud which thing I had never before done, I spent time listening to lectures by Rabbis and found my Hebrew quite lacking but more helpful than I knew as I understood the number and chapters and sections of scripture he was referencing, I spent time reading and listening to articles about the literary style present in Malachi and how it related to Ezra’s writings, and I spent countless hours crossing Malachi, Ezra, and Nehemiah in 2 or 3 translations to find correlations and quotes.

Last night while in a moment of reflection I realized 2 things: 1^st the sad feelings where still there and that all this I had done had not done anything to resolve them and 2^nd that I had spent all this time in Malachi and Ezra but had not really read what was written. I realized if I was asked what I had liked in my reading about Malachi in the last 3 days I would be short an answer. Embarrassed I opened Malachi and began to read.

The oracle of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi.

“I have loved you,” says the LORD. But you say, “How have you loved us?”

Those are the first 2 verses of Malachi (ESV) and they hit me hard. All of a sudden, I could see by my actions and the way I was going about that I had been saying that myself. The Lord has been there all along saying to me “I have loved you” and in my refusal to turn to Him when I was in need, I was clearly sending the message “How have you loved me?”

Oof, this was not what I wanted to be doing. I then bowed my head in prayer and turned back to the Lord. I opened my eyes and kept reading in Malachi. What written on the page goes to talk about how Israel can see that God loves them by the way He has treated Esau (which with Edom is a stand in for the worldly folk). But as I read the Lord opened my mind up to the ways He has been showing me that He loved me.

In thought I walked with the spirit through that Monday night. I thought back on to the wrong address, but could this time see the hand of the Lord in helping me remember that the previous year it had been at a park and helped me find the park. I walked with myself as the Monday night me nervously approached the young single adults almost none of whom he knew but this time I could see the love of the Lord in bringing me to a place where my friend Marcus could see me, and I could see the love of the Lord impressing on him to call out to me. I stood next to myself as the rain began to fall and saw it as the love of the Lord as the rain pushed me into the pavilion which gave anxious Janson no place to hid away. I stood there ashamed as I watched the me on Monday unable to see the love of the Lord in the approach of friends. As they came and talked, I heard the spirit whisper “Thou art not yet as Job; thy friends do not contend against thee” this was clear to me then as the love of the Lord in response to my heart ache of the unattended party and the response to the movie who’s theme of abandonment had so affected me. I watched as the love of the Lord reminded me with the happy couple that though I go through a moment of heart ache it is not worthy to be compared to the joy that will one day be. I watched as the love of the Lord gave protection and comfort in the form of overly loud music allowing the Monday night me to not have to maintain conversation well in such a state. I then watch that past version of me, so unable to see the love of the Lord around him leave. I rode with him to the store and then saw the love of the Lord as his eyes were brought up to see the rainbow.

As I sat in my home tears running down my face, I closed the book of Malachi. I was baffled by my inability to see the love of the Lord Monday night but so filled with love for the Lord for having shown me that He was there. I realized the truth of 1 John 4:18-19 “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear… We love Him, because He first loved us.” I am so thankful that the Lord loved me first, when I was still a sinner Jesus died for me, and when I am a foolish man bent on not seeking help the Lord still loved me first.

How has He loved us? In more ways than you know. Pray and ask in humility and I am sure he will show them unto you.

Im praying for you, please pray for me.