Floods & Foundations

"It's coming down in sheets outside," or so my Grandmother would say.  Her east Texas drawl would add on something about plants needing the water and roads being slippery.  And I would go back to gazing at the torrential downpour out the front porch door.  I would peer intently to see if I could see which ways the wind was blowing by the angle of the rain.  Ofttimes, we'd crack the porch door for a bit and then the wind would slam it shut at some point.  The door slamming would jar my mom into realizing how late the hour was and I'd be ushered into bed with soft scolds of staying up too late.  The wind.  It always caused a stir.  The next morning the yard would be full of tree and power line debris, not from the rain, but from the stormy winds blowing things about.

We've had crazy amounts of rain in the past week.  They said we'd have floods.  We didn't.  I think about that wind these days...there are a lot of those winds that blow on me even now.  They stir things in my soul.  Sometimes the winds come without rain.  But then sometimes the winds come with the rains, like this past week.  I stayed up most of a night listening to the rain and feeling the wind creep in the cracks of my apartment.  We live in an old but sturdy building.  The foundation is solid, but the age has shown quite a few cracks in the walls and door seals.  

Staring up at the ceiling I started to think about my foundation....the one in my heart.  The walls of my apartment building were rooted in the strong cement of years past.  Are the walls of my heart rooted in the foundation of His Word?  Are the walls of my heart steeped in the foundation of His love for me?  I started to see some cracks in the way I live...some discontentments that speak of a faulty foundation.  You know that itchy, mean case of the reds you can get?  I'd had a few consecutive days of it...where I feel like I don't fit in my own life.  And I realized, I'd allowed the winds of life to take the walls of my heart out of His foundation: His Love; His Word.  Scripture says (Luke 6:47-49; Matthew 7:24-27) that I have to "hear" the Words of God and DO them...I have to allow His Voice to become part of my day-in-day-out breathing.  So today, I guard against faulty foundations by choosing to do what I know He is speaking.  It's as easy as that old hymn, "...trust and obey for there's no other way, to be happy in Jesus, than to trust and obey..."  

 

Gee, how I love Him!  Praying we all trust and obey today...He loves us MORE.

xx

 

annetta