Life

The other morning I went for a power walk. The air was cool, the sun was beginning its slow ascent, the birds were chirping, a woodpecker was foraging for its breakfast with its tell-tale rhythmic tapping and people were heading to work and school. I marveled at the predictability and peace of it all because at the same time a totally different scene was taking place just miles away...

A mother was curled in a ball, her body wracked with tears flowing endlessly from a broken heart. A sister writhed in sleepless anguish. Friends stumbled in an emotional stupor, numb from their unexpected loss. A young man waited, cold and lifeless, soon to be laid to rest.

Both scenes co-existed, playing out simultaneously, one oblivious to the other! Such a paradox...such contradictory yet converging moments.

Reading statuses on FB was like embarking on an emotional roller-coaster ride. Posts attesting to God's goodness while others questioned why. Statements of joy mingled amongst the grief. Statuses informing of doctor's appointments and trips to the gym recorded directly above those of a moment that caused time to grind to a hault for the grieving ones.

I don't pretend to understand it all. I, again, have no choice but to return to Isaiah 55:8 for answers...

“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the LORD.

“And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine."

This passage has been a familiar one to me during my almost 30 years of walking with the Lord, but somehow these last few weeks it has become an anthem from His heart to mine...a banner He is waving over me sheltering me from the arrows of doubt that the enemy would love to hurl my way. I am faced with a choice, but I know in my heart there is no choice.

To do anything but trust that His sovereignty covers it all is to walk away from the Truth and I can't do it. I have experienced too much of His lavish love and incomprehensible grace to turn back now. I have seen too many hopeless situations transformed in the unlikeliest of ways to doubt that He can thread redemption throughout the broken pieces and create something beautiful and life-changing.

I choose to set my face and my heart toward heaven and whisper thru the tears...

I trust You!

Psalm 143:8

Let me hear Your lovingkindness in the morning;
For I trust in You;
Teach me the way in which I should walk;
For to You I lift up my soul.