A Church with a Heart for our Community

December 10th Wednesday

Greetings in the name of the One who etches ‘heaven’s poetry on our lives’ , Jesus Christ – THE Incarnate, Crucified, and Risen Saviour! Wow! another grey morning in the Kingdom…and yet the sun is shining behind all the clouds! God is at work, even when we don’t ‘see it’!  I will be praying for you today, asking Father to ‘shine’ through you into another person’s life. There are some of you who are rebelling against that idea, but I feel a song coming…“Sunshine, heavenly sunshine – Flooding my soul with glory divine – Sunshine, heavenly sunshine – Hallelujah, Jesus is mine!” 

This morning I received a daily devotion challenging me to write down 5 things that I saw or experienced this past week that remind me of God…and I thought, “if I could just add – things I heard or tasted or read – maybe I could write down another 5 or so. What about you? This morning I was reading a portion of scripture that dealt with responding to words of correction and discipline, and no one likes to be corrected and disciplined or even consider that we are in need of such a thing…but! Anyway, here is how a wise old pastor framed the words: “I know I distressed you greatly with my letter (correction and discipline). Although I felt awful at the time, I don’t feel at all bad now that I see how it turned out. The letter upset you, but only for a while. Now I’m glad–not that you were upset, but that were jarred into turning things around. You let the distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no loss. Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets end up on a deathbed of regrets. And now, isn’t wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You’re more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible.” 2 Corinthians 7:8-11a The Message.

I read those words over several times and decided that they should go in my Advent 2014 journal as a reminder that God shows up in all the important and necessary and ‘distressing’ times…and in showing up at thee moments He allows me the liberty of being driven closer to him or to be driven further away. I suppose that is the idea of Advent… ‘turning around’ – preparing room for the King of glory and in doing so I have the opportunity to become…MORE!

Be blessed!