(Editor's note: Rose has been a special part of the Just Moved Ministry family for a long time. Several of her blogs about being uprooted have appeared on our website as a Moving Story. She writes with honesty and a deep reliance on the Lord. You can read more of her blogs at http://www.rospiration.blogspot.com/)
You may have noticed my posts are distinctly lacking in the "God is in the flowers and rainbows" flavor. In fact, more of my posts are about trials I face or disappointments in myself. This no doubt comes from the fact that, while I am every bit female, I‘ve never been a "girly" girl. I look like death warmed over in pink, I simply look silly in ruffles, and though I love jewelry, the beautiful blingy cocktail rings my sweet friend Patty has given me are a glaring contradiction on my thin, veiny hands. And frankly, my life has been so challenge-filled since 1995 that I find little comfort in stress-busting devotionals that advise me to take a bubble bath or have my nails done. God IS in the flowers and rainbows, and probably in bubbles, too, but I need a God who is there to be found IN my pain, loss, anxiety, disappointments, grief, and frustrations. If He isn't to be encountered and experienced there, then what hope do any of us have?
After I take the bubble bath and have my nails done, what has changed? Have those admittedly fun exercises changed my circumstances? If they haven't changed my situation, have they changed me? No. And while I love bubble baths, I need something more substantial in my life. The most effective stress-buster to me is seeing God's hand moving to transform me in the middle of the messes my life seems to step into again and again like the ubiquitous gum on a summer day in a Wal-Mart parking lot.
I long to dance in the rain - not because I'm a pessimist, but because I know rain will come. I need a God who isn't afraid to get wet, who can transcend, transfigure, translate and transform, as the lyrics in John Mark McMillan's moving, anointed song, "How He Loves", powerfully declare: "When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory, and I realize just how beautiful You are and how great your affections are for me." I need a God of grit and guts and glory. That's who I'm encountering in this deepest trial of my life - a God of incredible, deep compassion and love - and that's who I pray you find within these thoughts and discoveries of mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment