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October 13 - December 14, 2022
When you live slow for a season, the Son has access to the parts of you normally covered up by everyday put-ons.
Darkness has such a way of swallowing up enthusiasm for the future.
“Making art provides uncomfortably accurate feedback about the gap that inevitably exists between what you intended to do, and what you did.”3 And the gap never stays silent. It reverberates with commentary. Sadly, for too many of us it’s a negative commentary.
How many times have I let imperfections cause me to be too hard on myself and too harsh with others?
We are imperfect because we are unfinished.
Just as breaking bread with another hungry human feeds our bodies with nourishment, breaking secrecy with another hurting human feeds our souls with compassion. We take the comfort of God we’ve received in the midst of our disappointments and use it to bring comfort to others.
When we show up with compassion for others, our own disappointments won’t ring as hollow or sting with sorrow nearly as much.
compassion.
God wants you, His creation, to connect with others and bring them light and life with the brush strokes of compassion.
God wants you and me, His favorite creations, to have the focal point of compassion. When people see us, do they see the compassion of their Creator?
Sometimes, you just have to let people you love have their journey on one side of the street and have yours on the other side of the street.
The heartbreak of that friendship that fell apart despite your best efforts to hold it together.
Usually, the most disappointing realities come from the most realistic expectations. An unmet longing from a realistic expectation is such a searing pain within a human heart.
But their choices were their own.
Their desires, their brokenness, their selfishness, or their lack of awareness left your needs unattended. Wha...
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met with a resistance and ultimately a rejection by someone you didn’t thi...
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“You’re not alone. At least we have each other. We’ll get through this together.”
Hoping doesn’t mean I put myself in harm’s way. It doesn’t mean I ignore reality. No, hoping means I acknowledge reality in the very same breath that I acknowledge
God’s sovereignty.
God loves us too much to answer our prayers in any other way than the right way.
And He loves us too much to answer our prayers at any other time than the right time.
Longsuffering.
Hello, God? Can I make some suggestions of really saintly people who would handle being longsuffering much better than I would?
God’s promises aren’t just for certain people at a certain low point.
It’s hard to remember what solid ground feels like when you’re shaking in the middle of the tightrope.
“Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD.” I forget that this kind of trusting in God is often forged in the crucible of longsuffering. God isn’t picking on me. God is picking me to personally live out one of His promises. I know I must walk through God’s process before I see His fulfilled promise.
I know I must walk through God’s process before I see His fulfilled promise.
The process isn’t a cruel way to keep you from the promise; it’s the exact preparation you’ll need to handle the promise.
God is far more interested in your being prepared than in your being comfortable.
knew I should probably cry, but no tears seemed available. Maybe I’d used them all up?
“God won’t give you more than you can handle.” But that’s not actually in the Bible.
God does say He won’t allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear and that He always provides a way out (1 Corinthians 10:13). But that’s not the same as God not giving us more than we can handle.
For we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might
not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:8–9)
God doesn’t expect us to handle this. He wants us to hand this over to Him.
If we keep walking around, thinking that God won’t give us more than we can handle, we set ourselves up to be suspicious of God.
The story I started telling myself was that life would never get any better. My mind became fixated on all that pointed to this season of suffering being my new normal.
I started listing things I did know.
I learned about these very necessary “pieces and parts” one day when a couple of girls introduced themselves while standing in line to get some take-out food at a restaurant near my house. Pauline and Jessica had both read my book Uninvited. We chatted for a minute about what God had been teaching them, and then the topic of what I’d be writing next came up. I told them about this book and the revelation God had given me about dust. Jessica’s eyes lit up. Her mom is a professional potter.
And then I read Isaiah 45:9: “Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you making?’ Does your work say, ‘The potter has no hands’?”
A potsherd is a broken piece of pottery.
God is who He says He is, and He will do what He says He will do. But to partner with Him in His work of transformation in our lives, we must seek Him with all our hearts. It’s our choice whether we stay stuck in our hurt or get renewed in our hearts.
“When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place” (Jeremiah 29:10).
For I know the plans I have for you . . . plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you. (Jeremiah 29:11–14)
When we seek God, we see God.
If we find ourselves in an incredibly disappointing place—a place we don’t want to be—a very long season of suffering that just goes on and on, or one we know will not be changed on this side of eternity, it’s easy to start feeling that some of God’s good plans don’t apply to us.
He has a perspective from where He sits that allows Him to see all things—the past, the present, and the future—from the day we are conceived to the day we return to dust and even beyond that into eternity.
Listen to me . . . you whom I have upheld since your birth, and have carried since you were born. Even to your old age and grey hairs I am he, I am he
who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you. I will sustain you and I will rescue you . . . I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, “My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.” From the east I summon a bird of prey; from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose. What I have said, that I will bring about; what I have planned, that I will do. (Isaiah 46:3–4, 9–11)
News comes at us to tell us what we are dealing with. Truth comes from God and then helps us process all we are dealing with.
