Michele Huey's Blog: God, Me, and a Cup of Tea, page 65

Time to reboot

      
The LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.  – Psalm 121:8 (NIV)
      
      
Last Saturday I thought my iPhone died. The screen went black and the contraption was unresponsive.
      
I did what any new smart phone owner would do – I panicked.
      
It took me years to upgrade from my dumb phone. I resisted, insisting I didn’t need one. I was comfortable with it, even though I recognized its growing inconveniences.
      
But that changed after a Christmas trip to our daughter’s in South Carolina, and I saw how helpful a smart phone could be as we travel.
      
So, within a week of returning home, I ordered an iPhone, which has all but become an appendage. Funny how you resist change even when it will improve your life.
      
I downloaded all these free apps – Lose It! to help me eat right, Runtastic to motivate me to exercise regularly, At Bat, an MLB app to keep up with my Pirates, Facebook to keep up with my friends, Kindle to keep up with my reading, Bible Gateway for its daily reading program, a weather app, and only one game app – Words with Friends (and 10 ongoing games).
      
So when my phone appeared dead, I felt, well, unplugged.
       
“Help!” I posted on Facebook.
      
Suggestions poured in from recharging the battery to rebooting it  (also called a “hard reset”).
      
After an hour of recharging, the phone was still unresponsive, so I took a deep breath, swallowed hard, then held down the power and home buttons for 15–20 seconds for the hard reset. And prayed.
      
It worked! I was a happy camper again.
      
As a friend explained on Facebook, the smart phone is really a hand-held computer, and computers, in order to run properly, regularly need to be rebooted – shut off completely, unplugged. Why? With all the things they have to do, most often simultaneously, electronics “get into an odd state,” one expert explains, and shutting it off forces it to “reset and restart from a good known state.”
      
Shutting down and starting over.
      
Isn’t that the cycle of life, too?
      
We fear change, and resist it, so sometimes we need to be forced to reboot.
      
Reboots go as far back as Adam and Eve. Think of other Bible “reboots” – those who were forced to change: Job, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Elijah, Peter and the rest of the apostles, Saul, to name a few.
      
And although the reset was hard, they were not alone as they faced new circumstances, new people, new purposes. God had a hand in it. He had a plan. And He was with them all the way.
      
What about you?
      
Are you going through a reboot? A hard reset?
      
Don’t fear change. Don’t fear starting back up.
      
He who made you watches over you and will guide you and give you the strength, wisdom, and fortitude to forget what's behind you and reach for what’s ahead (Philippians 3:13–14).
     
      
Dear God, I resist change, even when You sanction it. Help me to overcome my fear with the faith that You oversee every aspect of this reboot for my good. Amen. 

Special-Tea: Read Psalm 121 
    

      

God the Deliverer

The ABC’s of knowing God better: the letter D

Photo courtesy of Freedigitalphotos.net      
The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer. – Psalm 18:2 (NIV)
      
For He will deliver the needy when they cry out. – Psalm 72:12 (NIV)
      
      
I should have known better than to even try.
      
But when my daughter-in-law, Rachael, called Wednesday and kindly chastised me for neglecting our Tuesday-Thursday exercise dates for the past month, I told her I’d see her the next day.
      
I figured by 1:00, the warmer temperatures and the rain would melt the mess in the driveway and the lane. So after a light lunch of yogurt and granola, I laced up my hiking boots, zipped up my Carhartt hoodie, stuffed my exercise sneakers in a plastic bag, and grabbed an umbrella.
      
I could have waited until it stopped pouring. I could have said “Nuts with it” when I saw the ice in the driveway. I could have driven my truck the two-tenths of a mile to Rachael’s.
      
But I wanted to walk. The recent parade of snowstorms, frigid temperatures, and wind had intimidated this senior citizen to stay indoors. I missed being outside. When I bundled up and stepped out into the winter sunshine for a one-mile walk, I felt better for days.
      
There was no sunshine Thursday. Only overcast skies and, when I headed for Rachael’s, a downpour. But I was determined to walk the short distance. I mean, how bad could it be?
      
Sometimes being stubborn isn’t good.
      
I surveyed the rain-covered skating rink that was my driveway. Too risky. I headed for the yard, where the snow would give me traction. Not a good idea, considering the snow came to my knees. I tried stepping in the deer tracks, but still I landed on my tushie. If any of my neighbors had been watching, I’m sure they could have gotten a good submission to America’s Funniest Home Videos.
      
Somehow I managed to get back on my feet and to the road, where I followed the bare spots. I made it to within a hundred feet of my destination, then stopped. The rest of the way was a sheet of ice. I imagined myself sprawled on the glistening lane in the downpour, unable to get back up. Retreat was a risky option, as the road behind me was getting more slippery by the second, thanks to the rain.
      
Swallowing my pride, I pulled out my cell phone called Rachael, who backed up her SUV to where I stood and delivered me from my predicament.
       
Sometimes in life we get ourselves into jams and need someone to deliver us, but we’re too proud to ask. So we slog on, getting ourselves in deeper and deeper.
      
There is no place in the Bible where it says, “God helps those who help themselves.” On the contrary, God wants us to realize our need for Him (see Matthew 5:3). He’s there for us all the time, any time we need Him, whether the need is great or small (see Psalm 55:17). He is our Deliverer.
      
If He sent His Son to deliver us from sin’s eternal penalty, won’t He surely deliver us from the sometimes silly predicaments into which we get ourselves?
      
Oh, He won’t miraculously pluck us up from an icy roadway, but He can send someone to help, show us the way out, or give us the wisdom, courage and strength we need follow His directions.
      
All we have to do is swallow our pride and ask.
       
      
Deliver me from myself, O Lord! Amen.


Special-Tea: Read Psalm 107
      

Fill my cup, Lord

You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.  – Psalm 63:1 (NIV)
      
      
In these semi-retired days, I get to sleep in until 7:30 a.m.
      
So I don’t appreciate it when my cat decides, at 5:30 a.m. or thereabouts, that her food bowl needs replenished. I’ve tried filling up both water and food dishes at night before I retire. No dice. The cat still jumps on the bed and wakes me up. If I shoo her off or ignore her, she prances across my pillow.
      
So, grumbling, I fling back the covers, shuffle to the kitchen, and add food and water to her bowls. Sometimes the bowl is practically full, but that cat thinks if the bottom of the bowl is showing, it needs refilled. Sometimes I don’t add more food – I just cover the crater so the bottom doesn’t show.
      
Then I go back to bed until it’s time to get up. And shut the door.
      
One morning recently while I was stumbling, bleary-eyed, to the kitchen, I thought, “Do I hunger for God as much as my cat hungers for food?”
      
After I returned to bed, I lay there and thought about it.
      
It had been over a month since I’d had a quiet time. I was weeks behind in my Bible reading and my prayer life was practically nil, except for a few sentences I’d shoot up to heaven throughout the day.
      
I felt adrift in a life raft on a becalmed, foggy sea. Alone. And it was my doing.
      
As I sat at the window seat watching the birds at the bird feeder later that morning, a Scripture verse came to mind: “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8).
      
And so I did.
      
And He did.
      
A relationship with the Almighty doesn’t just happen. It must be nurtured, fed and watered daily, moment by moment, hour by hour.
      
Even when my cat has plenty in her bowls, she still comes to me. Maybe it’s not the food she wants as much as my attention.
      
Unlike me with my cat, God doesn’t grumble when I come to Him, even though my plate is full. He doesn’t treat me like I’m a bother. He doesn’t act like He has something better to do. He doesn’t shut the door when I think I’m satisfied.
      
He who watches over me neither slumbers nor sleeps (Psalm 121:3, 4). He’s waiting for me to come to Him, who “satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things” (Psalm 107:9).
      
Oh, to hunger and thirst for God!

      
Oh, God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. Oh, God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Three, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Then give me the grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.  - A. W. Tozer, “Following Hard After God”)


Special-Tea: Read Psalm 63       
      

A Valentine's Day Special

Me and Dean at Pretty Marsh, Acadia National Park, Sept. 2013 What is LOVE made of?   
And now I will show you the most excellent way. – 1 Corinthians 12:31b (NIV)

   
Hubby and I don’t do Valentine’s Day. For some reason, it’s never been an important event on our life calendar.
   
Oh, I tried to make it an event a few times. One year I cooked up a special dinner: roast beef heart and pink mashed potatoes, a meal we endured only once. A greeting card never seems to say what I want it to say, even when I make the card myself.
   
Perhaps it’s that what I feel for my husband of 40 years goes beyond words.
   
And I think the 40 years has a lot to do with it.
   
In the early years, I looked for what I could get in the relationship: companionship, love, support, a listening ear, sympathy. What I got was a man who worked 10 to 12 hour days five days a week, provided firewood, fixed things (an unending job because something always needs fixed), and built me a house. He’s been a good father to our three children—a softy, I always called him. But his softness balanced my harshness.
   
I’ve never seen him angry—upset a few times, but never angry. Even when I tried to pick a fight, he never took the bait. And he’s always supported me in my dreams. I dedicated my second book to him with these words: “To the man who fixes dinner, washes the dishes and clothes, dusts and vacuums, shops for groceries and puts them away, does the ‘kid runs’—the myriad of daily tasks considered ‘women’s work’—so that I could have the time to write. To the man who told me that he felt God’s will for his life was to free up my time so I could follow God’s call for my life.”
     
And whether I decided to go to work outside the home or quit the job I had, he’s always supported my decisions.
   
Although he “suggests” ways my cooking could be improved, he’s always eaten everything I’ve made, even when I couldn’t. Proving he told the truth when we were dating when he said, “I was in the service. I can eat anything.”
   
And now that the nest is empty, he still looks for ways to help the kids out, being the handyman for our daughter in South Carolina when we visit, to our daughter-in-law next door when our son’s job requires extended times away from home, and being the car repair guy and consultant when our youngest son’s old car broke down when he was in college. Whenever they call, any time of the day or night, he’s available to them.
   
But we’re learning to do things for “us” too. We’ve set aside Friday night as our “date night.” No chores when he comes home from work—and he better be home by 5:30. Homemade pizza and a movie. But he rarely makes it through the movie. I hear his soft snores around nine. I don’t even bother waking him up to go to bed. It never works and he doesn’t even remember. I just cover him with a blanket, turn off the TV, turn down the lights and softly kiss him on the forehead. He’ll get to bed eventually.
   
I used to feel sorry for myself when he neglected to say “I love you” every day. But—don’t tell him this—lately I’ve come to realize I don’t need to hear it. I see it—in the tired lines around his eyes, in the gray streaks through his beard, in the increasing stoop of his shoulders, in the slower pace of his steps. I hear “I love you” shouted from the stack of firewood by the wood stove, from the packages of venison and vegetables and berries in the freezer, from the 1997 Explorer that he fixed and fixed and fixed until we could afford to replace it. The walls of the house he built are his arms around me day and night.
   
“Saturday’s Valentine’s Day,” I said one February night five years ago as we sat at the supper table.
   
He looked up. “What do you want to do?”
   
I smiled. “Nothing, really. I’m such a homebody anymore.”
   
He smiled and nodded. He feels the same way. After a 55-hour week, all he wants is a good supper and a soft couch.
   
“We never did do Valentine’s Day, did we?” I said. “I wonder why.”
   
We ate in silence for a few minutes. Then it hit me.
   
“Because with you,” I said, warmth coursing through me, “I have Valentine’s Day every day.”

   
Dear God, You gave me the perfect life companion. Not a perfect man, but the man perfect for me. Thank you. Amen.
Special-Tea: Read 1 Corinthians 13NOTE: THIS POST FROM 2009 (which I tweaked to update) IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES. HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

Compassionate God

The ABC’s of knowing God better: the letter C

Quy Hoa Leper Hospital, Binh Dinh Province, Vietnam
When he cries out to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate. – Exodus 22:27 (NIV)
      
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love. – Psalm 103:8 (NIV)
      
      
When I was researching historical background for Part 1 of my novel, The Heart Remembers, which is set in Vietnam during the war, I discovered an interesting fact: Medical teams from the military hospitals were often sent into nearby villages when there was a lull in their hectic schedules to treat the locals. One of the places they visited was the Quy Hoa Leper Hospital in Binh Dinh province.
      
I was intrigued not only by the compassion shown by U.S. troops in the middle of an ugly war but also by the way this hospital treated lepers.
      
The hospital itself is located in a secluded cove, surrounded by mountains on three sides, with one of
Quy Hoa Beach, Vietnamthe nicest beaches in the area as the fourth boundary. But far from being depressing, the hospital grounds are more like a resort, and the patients live with their families in small, well-kept houses. They work, too — in the rice fields, the fishing industry, and in repair and craft shops.  
      
That’s a far cry from the way lepers were treated in biblical times, when they were the “untouchables,” forbidden to associate with anyone else but another leper. They were to cry out “Unclean!” whenever healthy people were in the vicinity, and if someone touched a leper, that person was considered defiled and was then shunned.
      
Unable to live with their loved ones, lepers were relegated to colonies outside the town limits and, being unemployable, begged for handouts to survive.
      
We can understand the desperation the leper felt when he approached Jesus, dropped down on his knees, and said, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
      
The Son of God did not shun him. Instead, “filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ he said.”
      
I like the way The Message phrases it: “Deeply moved, Jesus put out his hand, touched him, and said, ‘I want to. Be clean.’”
      
The Son of God didn’t have to touch the leper. He wanted to. It would have been better if he hadn’t. Now he’d be considered defiled. But as one commentary put it, “Jesus’ compassion for the man superseded ceremonial considerations.”
      
Compassion is defined as “sharing the hurts of another and wanting to help.”
      
It’s one thing to feel sorry for someone. But it’s another to feel so sorry that you have to do something – anything – to help that person.
      
Think of the outpouring of love and help when disaster strikes: when Hurricane Sandy devastated the Eastern Seaboard, when a mentally unstable gunman shot and killed 20 children, ages 6 and 7, and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Or 9-11. People with no connections to anyone in the disaster-stricken areas dropped what they were doing, loaded up provisions, and drove hours to find a way to help. 
      
Compassion trumps policy, procedure, ritual, ceremony, even common sense. Compassion is what drove Jesus. Compassion is what drives God. It is why he sent his Son to die in our place.
      
But we don’t have to wait until disaster strikes to show compassion. We can show it every day. Just look around. Ask God to open your eyes.
      
Who are the lepers in your world? The untouchables? The ones outside the city gate, shunned by “decent folks”?
      
Who can you reach out and touch today?
        
  
Fill me with Your compassion, Lord! Amen.

 Special-Tea: Read Lamentations 3:21–23, 32; Mark 1:40–45       
      
      

Nothing wasted

“Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” – John 6:12 (NIV)

   
I learned resourcefulness and frugality early. I was nine years old when my father lost his job and used his skills as a carpenter to put food on the table. Meatless meals, such as bowties and cottage cheese or tomato soup and potato pancakes, were the standard fare, as were leftovers.
      
The truth of the adage “waste not, want not” was a lesson well learned, for I needed to apply it when my husband and I were raising a family and building a house on one income. I threw nothing away. Even small, one-serving portions of vegetables were saved and used in a stew. Sometimes I forgot about the leftovers stashed in the refrigerator until obnoxious odors sent me on a search-and-pitch mission. At least a healthy growth of mold assuaged the guilt I felt throwing away food.
      
As the children grew, so did our income, and I began to be less frugal. By the time the empty nest years began, disposable dust rags, toilet bowl cleaning pads, kitchen and bathroom wipes and eyeglass lens cleaning cloths filled our cupboards. It’s easy to become careless when there’s plenty.
      
Jesus, God’s Son, who had the riches of heaven at His disposal, disliked waste. After He miraculously fed a crowd that numbered close to 10,000 people (the Gospels indicate 5,000 men were fed that day, but that number did not include women and children), He told His disciples to gather up the leftovers.
      
“Let nothing be wasted,” He said.
      
Jewish tradition dictated that bread scraps be picked up and saved, since the Jews considered bread, which often represents life, as a gift from God.
      
What a far cry from our attitude today! A mentality that everything is disposable has spilled over into how we view relationships and life itself. Aborting an unborn child, abandoning a spouse for greener pastures, and assisting the suicide of a chronically ill person demonstrate today’s throw-away attitude: “When you’re done with it or don’t want it, throw it away, whether or not it can still be used.”
      
The speaker for the 2014 Punxsutawney Christian Women’s Conference, Linda Evans Shepherd, has a daughter who was paralyzed and brain damaged in a car accident when she was 18 months old. Now in her twenties, Laura has a host of ongoing medical problems, but can communicate “yes” and “no” with her tongue. Linda says Laura is doing what she wants to do, which is to live. In spite of their difficult life, this girl is bringing joy to her family.
      
“Let nothing be wasted,” Jesus said.
      
Nothing. Not the shards of our fractured lives and shattered dreams. Not broken relationships or wrecked bodies. Gather the fragments and give them to the One who will make each fragment count.
      
      
Thank You, Lord, that, in Your hands, nothing is wasted. Amen.

 Special-Tea: Read John 6:1–13

Bread of Life

       
I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my daily bread. – Job 23:12 (NIV)
      
“I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never go hungry.” – Jesus, as quoted in John 6:35 (NIV)
      
      
My late father-in-law used to say a meal wasn’t complete without bread.
      
I, myself, have always loved bread –fresh out of the oven, toasted, stuffed with potatoes and cheese, smeared with spicy tomato sauce and piled high with cheese and pepperoni and, occasionally a variety of vegetables, such as black olives and green peppers. 
      
Bread has been a staple since man first figured out what to do with wheat. It has been called “the staff of life,” the mainstay of man’s diet.
      
Bread is mentioned all through the Bible: from Abraham serving bread to three heavenly visitors to his descendants strapping on their kneading bowls at the start of the exodus from Egypt; from God providing bread from heaven (manna) while they trekked the wilderness to the Promised Land to feeding bread baked on a hot stone to the depressed prophet Elijah centuries later as he fled the murderous Jezebel; from Jesus multiplying a few loaves to feed a crowd that numbered in the thousands to Him breaking bread at the last supper and telling His disciples, “This is My body, broken for you” and then breaking bread after accompanying two dejected, puzzled disciples to Emmaus after His resurrection. Bread is mentioned as early as Genesis 3:19.
      
Bread provides our bodies with needed fiber and vitamin B, which is essential to our digestive system and helps our bodies to use energy.
      
So why does bread get such a bad rap these days?
      
A loaf of bread made today with refined, “enriched” flour and loaded with preservatives to give it a longer shelf life is nothing like the bread our ancestors ate. We’ve so filled our stomachs with non-nutritional carbohydrates that adding bread to our daily diet overloads our systems. Low-carb diets abound in which bread is a forbidden food.
      
And so what was once the staff of life becomes a banned substance because we’ve developed cravings for sugars and starches that add the pounds.
      
And because we’ve become such a sedentary society. In biblical times, most people walked wherever they wanted to go. They worked in the fields, raising crops or animals. They lived physically demanding lives. No motorized wheels to help them get around (or wheels on the bottom of desk chairs).
      
“Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?” God admonishes us through the prophet Isaiah. “Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare” (Isaiah 55:2).
      
The richest of fare: God Himself.
      
Jesus said He is the Bread of Life. He provides us with what we need to live healthy spiritual lives, now and for all eternity.
      
His Word is bread to the spiritually hungry.
      
“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,” Jesus told His tempter in Matthew 4:4, quoting the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 8:3).
      
God’s Word is our daily bread.
      
Jesus is the Staff of Life.
      
Tell me, do you include Bread in your daily diet?
      
      
Make me hungry for You, O Lord. Amen.


Special-Tea: Read John 6:25–59  
In two weeks, we'll use the letter "C" to learn more about God.. 



      
      

My word

Renew a steadfast spirit within me. – Psalm 51:10 (NIV)       
      
When the latest round of New Year’s resolutions took the shape of just one word, I scoffed.
      
One word to sum up all I wanted to accomplish in 2014?

Huh-uh. I struggle to keep within the word limit for my column. In fact, many weeks I delete more than a hundred words from the first draft. When I have a speaking engagement, I watch the clock carefully. If there’s none in sight (and many times there isn’t) and my husband is in the audience, he sits in the back and waves his cell phone to signal it’s time to start wrapping up. Long-winded – that’s me, all right.
      
One word.
      
Then, out of the blue, it came to me, my one word for 2014:

Steadfast.
      
Where did that come from? I wondered. I wasn’t even thinking about it, and I certainly didn’t plan to jump on the “one word for the year” bandwagon.
      
But there it was. In all its naked truth.

Steadfast.
      
I knew the second it planted itself in my mind, heart and spirit that it is my word.
      
I looked it up online. “Fixed in direction; firm in purpose, resolution, faith, attachment; unwavering; firmly established; firmly fixed in place or position,” I read at Dictionary.com.
      
I looked up Scripture that used the word. I noted the words the Amplified Version uses in Psalm 51:10: “Renew a right, persevering, and steadfast spirit within me.”
      
Then I looked back at 2013. While I persevered at a few things, I hadn’t completed others – things I could have and should have finished, that were within my power to do so. But I didn’t.
      
I need steadfast.
      
First, I need to be steadfast in spending time with God. I tend to start out the year reading the Bible and praying with gusto. Then eventually I peter out. I didn’t even start this year with any zeal. Twice, and it’s not even three weeks into January, I’ve blocked a chunk of time to get caught up on my Bible reading. Now that I’m caught up, I need to be steadfast and stay caught up.
      
And I need to be steadfast in sitting still and just listening. Too many times I don’t hear what God is trying to tell me because my mind is flitting about like a hummingbird. I need to remember Isaiah 26:3: “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast” (stayed or fixed on God).
      
Second, I need to be steadfast with my ER-ER (Eat Right-Exercise Regularly) program and make it a lifestyle. Two years ago I lost 25 pounds, then went back to feeding my addiction for bread and pasta, and gained it all back. I felt tired and lethargic. Now that I’m back on track, I have more energy and feel so much better. But I must remain firm in my purpose of obtaining and maintaining good health through ER-ER.
      
Third, I need to be steadfast in my work – professionally and personally. Finish that novel, then rewrite and edit it. Review student writing lessons in a timely manner. Personally, keep ahead of the clutter.
      
STEADFAST.
      
Yep, it’s a good word for me.
      
What about you – what is your word for 2014?
      
      
Renew a steadfast spirit within me, O Lord – daily, hourly, minute by minute. Amen.


Special-Tea:  Read 1 Corinthians 15:58       
      

A - Who's in Charge?

Throughout 2014, every two weeks, we will be exploring the character of God as we seek to know Him better, using the letters of the alphabet. Today we look at the letter A. 

Άλφα, Ωμέγα

In the beginning God . . .  – Genesis 1:1 (NIV)
      
I am the Alpha and the Omega . . . – Revelation 1:8; 21:6; 22:13 (NIV)
      
      
“God is not our buddy or our errand boy,” Marlene Bagnull notes in Write His Answer, her Bible study for Christian writers.
      
I read those words in 1996 and never forgot them. They extend into every area of my life, not just my writing and speaking.
      
You see, too often I forget who’s in charge and treat God like my chum or my gopher (you know, go-fer-this, go-fer-that). I shoot up prayer requests like orders, expecting Him to answer when I want, which is usually right now, and the way I want. It’s like I’m the master and He’s the servant.
      
Yes, the Bible tells us to pray, to lay our requests before Him, to ask, to seek, to knock, the cast all our cares on Him, and He will hear and will answer. In fact, He knows our needs before we even ask.
      
But none of the verses I’ve alluded to tell us to tell Him how to answer or when to answer.
      
In our me-first world, we tend to think we’re in charge.
      
Mankind has always had that problem – thinking he’s the center of the universe. Remember the uproar when Copernicus, in the sixteenth century, theorized that the earth revolved around the sun? How dare him! It wasn’t until the next century that Galileo and his telescope proved him right.
      
But we still have that problem of putting ourselves as the center of the universe. Everything and everyone else, including God, revolves around us and our wants. Just look at the way people drive. Me-first. Get out of my way. The rules of the road aren’t for me, so why should I use turn signals, stop at stop signs (isn’t slowing down enough?), or turn on my headlights when it’s raining or dusky? And if you’re going too slow for me, I’ll ride your tail until you speed up or I get a chance to pass you, even in a no-passing zone.
      
Yikes!
      
The Bible begins with four simple words: In the beginning God.
      
In the beginning of what? Of the created universe. Of time.
      
In the beginning God was already there. He created time.
      
The Hebrew word used for God in Genesis 1:1 is Elohim, and means “mighty God or supreme God.” Another name for God is Adonai, translated “Lord” and means “Master or owner of all things.” And why wouldn’t He be? He created it all.
      
God is the Alpha (the first letter of the Greek alphabet), and everyone knows the Alpha is the undisputed leader of the pack.
      
God is the Omega (the last letter of the Greek alphabet), the One who remains standing after the final battle is fought, after the earth as we know it disappears, after a new heaven and a new earth appear, after time ends and eternity begins. 
      
God is creator, master, the sovereign Lord of all that happens from the beginning to the end, the One who rules over human history.
      
He’s not anybody’s good buddy or errand boy.
      
      
Remind me, Lord, that You, not I, are the One in charge. You are Adonai, the Alpha of my life. Amen.

 Special-Tea: Read Genesis 1; Revelation 21–22              
NOTE: In two weeks, we’ll seek God through the letter “B.”