For the last month I’ve stepped into another unwanted transition. It isn’t the first time I’ve been in survival mode within five years, but this might be the bleakest. Things could be worse, of course, so I count my blessings, but not without questioning the Lord in my prayer times. Hmm…I’ve wondered, for example, why I’m encountering what begins as particularly well-suited opportunities, that turn into closed doors and deferred hope. Knowing the particulars involved, I can easily blame our hurting economy, which is also in survival mode.
The timely sermons at church encourage me not to worry but trust in God, to make Him my one and only. He’s the Source of all we need. The Lord continues to get His point across to me. His mercy and understanding is a flood of grace whenever needed. It comes on an “as needed basis” for those He calls His own. I am also looking hard to find a job, but I start to worry if I think too much about how and where to live, and about those who need me. I try to keep focused on Jesus, who walked on water to get across a stormy sea and to the place He was heading.
It seems I am sitting in a boat, it’s terribly dark, stormy, everything is tossing and heaving, and I don’t even know which shore I should head towards. At this moment, all I see is Jesus and He’s barely within sight of my pitching, frightening situation. So, I live these days in faith and trust, but not without occasions of panic.
Putting the present aside for a moment, I perused some of my earlier blogs here. I read the one “Mountains of Glory” which, by the way, gets the most hits. I reminisced about my mountaintop experience with the Lord when I went to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and the Mount of Beatitudes along the Sea of Galilee. That was in 2009. In 2010 I completed the novel the Lord inspired me to write: His Kingdom Come. It turned out wonderfully. 2011 hasn’t been so kind.
My past blog helped me remember the beauty of Jerusalem and the Galilee area, Israel’s two sacred mountains, the inspiration I experienced and the acute sense of the Lord’s presence I felt there. The holy ground of those mountains beneath my feet, the view my eyes beheld . . . the memory is still vivid. I felt on top of the world there and God’s Spirit burned true and real within me. Those were bright, heavenly places. And I knew then that we live in the days ushering in the climax of the Ages – the nearness of our Beloved’s return. So, although I am in a different place right now, I know it’s not forever and God will intervene for me.
The other day I read Luke 18:8 in which Jesus unveiled His heart so poignantly: “…When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”
Faith means everything to the Lord. I’d like to live this time of uncertainty and at least give Him a little pleasure – if nothing else, that He will see my faith and smile.