COMBING THE LIGHT

Quiet lingers in my life for the moment. It is a certain blessed amplitude when I can sit back and reflect on my current situation and how it is so different than the past.

This afternoon, the fall weather has turned the sky clouding and cool. But it is a holiday and as result I am hope instead of working. Later a few friends will be stopping by to share in the day and see how our home has improved since we finished things like the landscaping.

In the living room, my wife is babysitting our two month-old grandson while his parents are working. He has turned out to be true blessed despite the usual demands all infants have on one's time.

What is amazing is only a few short months ago, we were living in an apartment and had no idea when our ordeal of trying to get a home built would be over. Our grandson wasn't even yet born and life was so burden by so many demands.

Now, being on the other side of this valley, I can rejoice and look back to see how the light of God's promise help see us through this change. It is the one purest joy that for any person of faith redeems when tears flow to often.

And I like to hope that during these moments of quiet I will not forget or forsake my Lord and Savior. For it becomes so easy when life reaches a time of less tension to stop remember how the Lord does control and grace us in so many ways.

It might be difficult when tragedy strikes to appreciate that process for a variety of reasons, but I think the heart when troubled in any soul that is a follower of Christ will naturally lift up a prayer for deliverance. How much more is the challenge to maintain that same sense of urgency and desire for the Lord when things are calm.

Yet, it is in both situations, I think we see how what we value truly dominates our lives. We can either turn to the Lord when we have a crisis and then drift away later or try to cling no matter what.

I don't know about others, but I often feel used and uncared about when somebody treats me as a source to lean on in an emergency and then never calls me or asks about me when things are okay at that end. I just can't help, but feel God is grieved when we do the same to him.

He listens to our prayers and loves us unconditionally. But how often do we only pray when we have a need. Or go to church or seek to serve him when it has some purpose that is for our own benefit.

Sadly, there are those who use church as a platform to get attention rather that to praise the Lord. I doubt he feels anymore impressed with that kind of shallow behavior than he does when we only seek him when we have a need. I pray we listen to his spirit in the quiet times as well as seek him in the dark times.