Pressed
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada with a week of poems just for you, and I have just the word for you today if you are feeling “pressed in on all sides.” Maybe deadlines are looming at work, your email inbox is filling up with requests, your child’s teacher is asking for an appointment, you need someone to take you to pick up your car at the auto repair shop, and there’s a leak under the sink for which they don’t make rubber washers anymore — a leak that refuses to be fixed, so the cabinet liner is soaked, the floor vinyl is warping, and now, you smell mold every time you open the doors. Okay, so your circumstances may be different, but you know what pressure feels like, right? You know what pressure can do. You know the things that are hemming you in on all sides.
For me, I’m breaking in a new corset. You see, I wear one of those surgical, support garments that helps me sit up straight and breathe deeply. It kinda looks like something Scarlett O’Hara would wear. Well, it’s brand-new (my old ones are just too threadbare), and this thing is so stiff and rigid and tight so, sure, I’m sitting up straight and breathing, but, oh man, it hurts like crazy. And this new corset is creating different aches and pains that I haven’t experienced since the last time I broke in a new surgical support garment. And what can I say? With all the other stuff going on with my disability, it’s just one more of those little “things.” Just one more thing added to all the rest that goes with paralysis. So, I understand if you are feeling pressure today, I know something about it, I’m with you, I understand, I get it.
It’s why I thought that today you might be encouraged by a little poem that encourages me this morning written by Raymond Edman. It’s called “Pressed” and it goes like this:
Pressed out of measure, and pressed to all length;
Pressed so intensely it seems beyond strength;
Pressed in the body and pressed in the soul
Pressed in the mind till the dark surges roll:
Pressure by foes, and pressure by friends;
Pressure on pressure till life nearly ends:
Pressed into knowing no helper but God;
Pressed into loving the staff and the rod:
Pressed into liberty where nothing clings;
Pressed into faith for impossible things:
Pressed into living a life in the Lord;
Pressed into living a Christ-life outpoured.
– Annie Johnson Flint*
That’s a great little poem, and I love that part about being “pressed into faith for impossible things and “pressed into living a life in the Lord.” Second Corinthians Chapter 4 talks about the kind of pressure you’re dealing with today. It says, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; struck down, but not destroyed.” Now here’s the neat part: “for we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” What is the point behind this passage of Scripture? Well, friend, God presses you and me in on all sides so that we might learn to lean harder on him, because the weaker you are, the harder you have to lean on Jesus — right? And the more we lean on him, the stronger you and I will discover him to be. Friend, if you would like a copy of that poem by Raymond Edman called “Pressed” well, you can write me today at Joni and Friends, PO Box 3333, Agoura Hills, California, 91376 or you can go right to my radio page at joniandfriends.org and download it off our website. Pin it to your corkboard or share with a friend. Pass on the word, the Good Word, the Godly Word, to press on and press harder against our strong and wonderful Savior, Jesus Christ.
*The original broadcast erroneously credited Raymond Edman as the poem’s author. The author of the poem “Pressed” is Annie Johnson Flint.
Previously aired as program #8078 on 4/17/13.
© Joni and Friends
