So, we’re all in this together ~ you and I. There’s a new day a dawning! The morning comes and brings its moments with it. Little moments, big moments, happy and sad moments and so many moments that we have to encounter along the way. We can choose to make the best of them or we can give up the fight and crumble beneath them. We can sit and toss it all through our minds with worry while we miss the blessings or we can simply trust God for the outcome and enjoy the minutes as they present themselves.
A bad hair day after the bath π
So yes, beautiful you ~ Here we sit ~ together ~ you and I, in our little corners of the world ~ our far corners of the world, each with our stuff and some happiness and some heaviness of heart. Financial pressure, friends, relationships, church issues, work related situations, ministry situations, family issues, time pressures, kid problems and the list is long and the battles very real in our little worlds. But, it’s also a new day to praise the Lord ~ and beautiful soul ~ it’s a new day to be thankful in that heart of yours for all that you have and all that God will do for you today. There are sweet miracles tucked into unhappy corners and hopeless corners and tight spots that you just want to disappear from your life and dissipate into oblivion. So ~ stand firm, hold fast, and hang on to the promises of God! Claim the victory. Walk on undaunted by the unexpected events that may come along to discourage and defeat. Ask God for His direction in this moment and toss the worries aside to find the joy of divine miracles in your journey with God today. Going deeper with Him allow Him to serenade you with sweet serendipitous through the daily moments. Look under the rocks, the stones and the just plain difficult places! You just might find something awesome directly from His hand! That’s what he does! I love how He does it!
Psalm 72:18
“Praise be to the LORD God, the God of Israel, who alone does marvelous deeds.”
Psalm 77:14
“You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the peoples.”
Denying the Ashley Madison hack-job certainly won’t cover it up and it certainly won’t fix it. Somehow we hush, hush over it in order to downplay it’s reality hoping it disappears without causing an outbreak of family rivalries in a world already teetering on the abyss of self-destruction. But it won’t go away and the deep-rooted hurt won’t dissipate, ‘cuz sin doesn’t go away ~ not easily! Not ever!
It hacked it’s ugly way into our world ~ our perfect, God-breathed Garden Of Eden, in the beginning of time and sin ‘s been kicking’ around ever since. It’s managed by the enemy himself as it robs, ruins and brings about death to it victims and is relentless in it’s subtle and sometimes blatant attacks. Take a look around and see for yourself what it’s doing in the lives of those whose names were leaked out from a so called secure, dark web site. See what it does to it’s guilty and willing victims and to the innocent victims left to pick up the pieces. Just say it, ‘Sin ruins and destroys’ ~ let’s call it what it is and know that it will always be brought out in the open somewhere, sometime, and some place! A genuinely, repentant heart can find mercy through God’s endless, and rich unconditional love, and a grace seeker can find grace to help in time of need, but family members and broken hearts find it difficult to forgive and make a comeback from it’s fangs of poison devastation. Yeah, it’s for sure a long, tough journey after sin infiltrates and surfaces breaking trust and altering reputations. There is nothing on the planet that can heal and mend the hearts broken through such tragic events because consequences always follow bad choices and although a ‘sorry’ might ease the pain a bit, it will never regain the broken and lost reputation, at least not quickly.
So ~ beautiful soul, and you are beautiful, remember it! The dark side is just that ~ very dark ~ very bleak and when given the chance it will bring you down to your lowest moment. There is hope after failure and The Psalmist knew it! He knew too, how easy it was to fall into temptation and in Psalm 19: 12 offered a prayer to his God, your God, our God,
“Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant from wilful sins; may they not rule over me. Then will I be blameless, innocent of great transgression…May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing in Your sight, Oh Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.”
John 1: 5 “This is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all.”
Life in the dark is no life at all. God’s forgiveness will light your soul and brighten your step and bring peace amidst chaotic conditions.
β€ β€
So you and I, and we and us and everyone, we all sit in our places of accusations don’t we? Those places where those critical words are thrown at us and though, we might not want to admit it, those places where we throw ’em out with snide remarks and judgemental airs about us! Oh those judgement calls, are catchy aren’t they? Sometimes they trip us up. We dangle a trap for those we think deserve it and sometimes get caught ourselves. What goes around, comes around they say and so often it does, so we need to practice daily the golden rule and do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Matthew 7:12, says it this way, βSo whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them…” . With that in mind, you and I and we and all of us, need to practice grace calls instead. We need to be givers of grace ‘cuz we don’t know when we’ll need the grace coming back to us in and through and during this long journey of life.
Accusations? Yeah…The Pharisees relentlessly threw them out all over the place with their smug, religious attitudes, proud of their knowledge and strict rules under the law! ~ Nope ~ no grace there, not in their circles of influence. Oh such strict rules they lived by and without a hint of mercy, caught anyone who didn’t oblige or fell short. They were good at deceit and twisting words for their own agendas and so they did. They baited a subtle, sly trap for Jesus upon confrontation with Him in the temple courts, where they presented before Him a woman caught in adultery. According to the law, she needed to be stoned but what would His answer be? John 8: 6,7,8, “They were saying this, testing Him, so that they might have grounds for accusing Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground. But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.⦔ We don’t know what He wrote, but I don’t think it’s important for the lesson hidden here, or we would have been told. What I love is the fact that Jesus stooped or bent down before these “high in religious authority” types. Jesus, the divine Truth and the Light bent down low enough to write before His accusers, but we don’t have any record of what He wrote.
How dare they try to undermine His credentials and His authority! How dare they try to trip Him up with their manipulative techniques and trick questions. Yet, don’t we? Don’t we undermine His authority, as the one and only True judge, when we pass judgement on others? It’s really not our place it’s His. In spite of their attempts, Jesus would not be tripped up. He knew them! He knew their hearts and was familiar with their secret agendas and I love it, love it, love it how He didn’t react in any kind of human stereotype to such a scandalous scene. What a divine example when, instead of throwing insults back with His perfect and True authority, He stooped and bent low to the ground before the woman’s accusers and those who set Him up! Β I love the true, gentle humility that Christ always exemplified, always displayed, and always acted out. True humility! It was just His nature. It is His nature and we are so needy to be more like Christ in our reactions to unfair circumstances. True humility is a difficult thing. It’s not an easy action to bend and flex in our attitude before one who accuses and one who lies and one who tries to catch us off guard with their own selfish agendas and plans. Our “default” nature is to “Rise up” and accuse back with anger and fight back with words and could or should we use the catch phrase of sticks and stones? Oh…so often we throw them don’t we? But…. Who could throw that first stone in that scandalous scene there in the temple courts…no one! Absolutely no one, and so they left one by one and they left quietly and they left the woman alone with her Savior and the Saviour of the world and our Saviour ~ the one who saves us from the sin and ruin of our own lives.
So for all the accusations that come our way, for the rumours, true or untrue ~ let’s be honest and face the music, if need be, but let’s face them with true repentance and true humility, Β “cuz there is God’s grace for our mess ups for sure. Β True repentance will receive true forgiveness and find God’s sweet grace there. Β And let’s remember ~ before passing on a rumour or harshly handing out a judgement call ` to check our own hands for cleanliness, ‘cuz the sand that we throw into the eyes of others will stick to the hand that throws it! Instead of judgement, give a grace call, just one more time, Β ‘cuz down that long road ahead, we might just be thankful for it!
Romans 2:1
“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.”
So there’s a whole lot of “What if”s” and “Why For’s” and “How come’s” and we sit and wonder and question and really don’t have any concrete answers for any of it. No answers for the heap of stuff that flies around our heads and fills our ears with ridicule and rebuke and no answers for the criticism, the hard times and the difficult situations that our accusers and just life throw at us from out of nowhere. No reasons really, but yet no answers for the very real insecurities that so easily break us and take over, when pushed into a corner.
So, beautiful soul, when push comes to shove in the heat of the day, at the end of the day, say with the Psalmist in Psalm 130: 5, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord, more than the watchmen wait for the morning.” Ahh, yes, ‘Wait”! Wait on His word. and hope in that Word of His. It’s more beneficial than all the uninvited rebuke and critical words that pierce your ears!
The enemy got in and shook you up and took you down a bit, but it’s not yours to deal with ‘cuz God’s got it this time ~ all that rebuke ~ all that ridicule; He’s got it for you and know something else? He’s got the healing that you need to soothe the hurt and the sweet balm of grace to cover you and get you up and running again. Let His grace do it’s divine flowing over your insecure spirit and bruised but beautiful soul. Remember this you ~ just as you are ~ You are His masterpiece, fashioned and molded perfectly to do just what He has for you to do. Do it well and do it to glorify His name and Know at the end of the day that the morning will come and it will be a beautiful day after all.
So, we’re all in this together ~ you and I. There’s a new day a dawning! The morning comes and brings its moments with it. Little moments, big moments, happy and sad moments and so many moments that we have to encounter along the way. We can choose to make the best of them or we can give up the fight and crumble beneath them. We can sit and toss it all through our minds with worry while we miss the blessings or we can simply trust God for the outcome and enjoy the minutes as they present themselves.
Hope and Healing In Hard Places 