Trust Remembers the Rainbow…

What to do when we are hurting or someone we love is in pain?  Humanity falls so short of who God is and how he responds to our pain.  As believer’s we pull out the trust card, but realize we can’t find it.  The storm has come and the wind has blown our trust away.  All we can see is the fog.  All we can feel is frozen.

We sink into despair.  Despair is close at hand and can be found.  Our minds keep weaving webs of blame, “what did we do wrong?”, when we should be asking “who is God?”  God is faithful, and someone we can trust.

Trust is not searching frantically for our umbrella to keep us dry.  Trust is standing in the pouring rain knowing He is beside us.  Just as the rain grows the fruit of the field, so our pain can grow the fruit of the spirit, if we trust that God is indeed in control.

Trust is knowing He loves us soaking wet with tears, or dry to the spiritual bone.

Trust is not trying to be who we think we need to be, in order to forge a future, but asking God to be our future.

Trust is stepping aside, because His plans are better than our own.

Trust exists in the midst of pain.  Like folded angel wings it waits.  Trust remembers the rainbow, the cross, and Easter morning.  Every pang and sting grows fainter as we….

…”Trust in the Lord with all our strength and lean not unto our own understanding, but acknowledge him in all our ways, and He will direct our path” Proverbs 3:5,6

Who is God?  He is our creator.  If He can give us life, He can sustain us.  If He can raise Christ from the dead, He can heal us.  If He is preparing a place for us in eternity, then he most certainly can help us find our place here on earth.

And so we pray for our beloved who is in pain…

Colossians 1:9  “…from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will, in all spiritual wisdom and understanding”

Save Us from the Lie of The Fairy Tale

(please realize this blog post may not fit every scenario, and is not meant to. However it is my hope we can all glean more of His truth and grow.)

It is very dangerous to assume you know what is going on in another person’s life.  When you hear someone is hurting, you probably spend a lot of time asking yourself questions.  How can I help them?  How did they get here?  What did I miss?  What can I do?  Or, who can I blame?

It is especially difficult to speculate why a couple has separated.  Just because it happens everyday, doesn’t mean the world still sits on its axis.  It isn’t our job to fix people, but let’s be honest, we can ache, and we do.  We are all affected, we can’t stand around and pretend it isn’t happening.

Our daughter was having trouble making decisions the other day.  Her choice seemed so simple, until I realized that a relative’s family break-up was behind her indecision. You don’t have to be smack in the middle of a couple’s separation to come undone – just close enough to see the knife in their eyes, and Rapunzel’s wall begins to crumble. No one comes to wake the sleeping princess.  Suddenly you realize all the fairy tales read to you before bedtime, were just that – fairy tales. The color fades from the pages, and all that is left is reality.

Today’s reality reveals that many of the princes and princesses who vowed ’till death do us part, have fallen asleep.  Many have experienced extreme difficulty in their relationships.  Some have written other story-lines in which to live in, one that allows them to be who they want to be, or one that gives them permission to disappear.

How many people marry and believe that their soul mate, knight in shining armor, or Cinderella, is going to save them?  Save them from what exactly?  Reality?  Mistaken Identity?

How can we be who we want to be, if we don’t even know who we were meant to be?  We will not find ourselves by gazing in our spouse’s eyes.  All the love song lyrics in the world can never create the perfect love story, the perfect feeling perhaps, but only for a moment.  So how do we get to the “happy ever after”?

We will not find ourselves in our children’s eye’s, either.

I suggest we look to the truth, however boring that has become to our heavily sedated entertained minds.  The truth paints a much different picture and approach than we are used to.  The truth doesn’t come in comic book color, rather a politically incorrect black and white.  However – the truth deals in reality and guarantees a happy ending.  How can this be?  This happy ending isn’t woven by our own will, but the will of a true prince.  He died to save us from the lie of the fairy tale.  He knows who we are supposed to be, and can give us abundant life in every way.  By looking in his eyes, we no longer expect others to live up to our unrealistic super human expectations.  We can make mistakes, they can make mistakes.  But the truth does not make mistakes.  Because He is faithful, we too can be faithful.

Do you know who you are?

Do you know who Jesus says you are?

James 1:23 tells us “Do not merely listen to the word and deceive yourselves, do what it says.  Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror, and after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it, not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it – they will be blessed in what they do.

Please don’t take this verse as a recipe for “doing”.  If you do anything – dig in the word.  Ask Jesus to reveal His truth to you, and then live by it.