When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
The old man of anxiety has been showing his wrinkled and pockmarked face lately. For no apparent reason, at no apparently special time he tries to come for a visit lately. As much as I purge my thoughts, as much as I pray, as much as I know that it is my brain in overdrive, it-is-relentless. While my center is fully on the face of Christ and on the goodness there in, life gets in the way sometimes.
I love the somewhat enigmatic statement that God makes to Moses when he inquires about who to say sent him. "I am that I am" is God's response. Moses, who undoubtedly was experiencing a moment on the threshold of anxiety and stress asked God for who He was. God answered.
So often we get so caught up in the feeling that God is so high up there, so far from us that we dare not approach him. We dare not ask him anything because we are not worthy in our own estimation. Jesus came and reordered our universe so that we can indeed sit at the feet of Father God and ask him "Who are you", or better "Who am I Lord?"
When we approach God and come with our backs burdened and our neck kinked from the heavy labor of life, He reminds us to rest. Not just rest for rejuvenation, rest for rests sake. God created the universe, God created the Earth, and God saw fit to create you, his one in billions, unique in all your quirks and eccentricities. Rest in the goodness of God.
God's I AM statements always get me because they are so good. Here they are;
1) I AM the bread of life (John 6:35). This is sustenance and care for our daily need.
2) I AM the light of the world (John 8:12). This is direction for our feet and for our thoughts and actions.
3) I AM the good shepherd (John 10:11). A shepherd provides discipline and correction to his flock, as well as provides nourishment and sustenance.
4) I AM the resurrection and the life. (John 11:25) God is the prime source, and Jesus is the path, to life with God. His life and death and resurrection provide the "blessed assurance, Jesus is mine" as the old hymn goes.
Anxiety will always come, and it will always go. Anxiety is time bound and specific, the Love of Christ eternal and for everything. Those things that cast anxiety on my soul today will provide strength for tomorrow. All that God allows to happen will grow, strengthen and develop you. God does not promise us happiness on earth, instead He promises wholeness (or holiness)
~Selah
No comments:
Post a Comment