A dear friend called me this afternoon to ask how I was doing. See, I emailed her late last night to ask her to pray for me about something, and being a sweet and thoughtful sister in Christ, she called to check up on me. I laughed and said I was fine, and that, honestly, I'd hardly thought about it. Praise the Lord, right? Right!
Well, let me tell you that it wasn't because I'm some paragon of self-discipline and was able to overcome by the sheer force of my holiness. (Side note: if I ever DO say anything like that, stand back, because there's a ten-foot kill radius when the lightning strikes.) It was because I've been seriously distracted by the grace of God today. Woke up pumped to gather with God's people, had my socks knocked RIGHT off by the word preached and applied, watched the Cardboard Stories video I just posted, read my best friend's testimony, cried intermittently all day, praised God for Alfred Hitchcock movies while I watched Notorious, and hardly had a moment to focus on my "issues." It's been a really, really good day.
And look, here's the thing that I think I haven't been getting lately: it's not that my "issues" don't matter. They do. They're real. They matter to me and they matter to my loving Heavenly Father. And I don't need to do some Buddhist and/or Hipster thing and detach or transcend or whatever. I just need to see Christ more vividly than all that other stuff.
Pain? It's not an illusion. Frustration? Disappointment? Not always idols, like some well-meaning Christians like to insist. But man, I keep thinking about the lyrics to that song -- "the things of Earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace."
My stuff, my pain, my frustration and disappointment, I'm still working through it. I'm still bringing it before the Lord. But I was reminded today that my "to-think-about" list needs to include a whole bunch more of God and his grace and his Son and his provision and... and ALL that amazing, eternal stuff. Everything else is still there, it just needs to move way down the list.
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4 comments:
This is almost EXACTLY what we discussed at Community Group tonight.
In our pain, frustration, happiness, struggle, whatever, we need to seek the FACE of HIM Who calls us to Himself.
Psalm 27:8 - You have said, "Seek my face." My heart says to you, "Your face, LORD, do I seek."
I.e., God tells us to seek His FACE, not His hand, arm, feet, wisdom, etc.; instead, His FACE, Him, just Him in His beauty and splendor. It doesn't make all the problems go away, but it shows them for what they are.
YAYAYAY God for revealing Himself to us!
I really wish we could spell it "splendour". And honour. And succour. Well, not that one. Succor's just a weird word, isn't it?
Onya Laura.
Thanks Fiona.
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