Deviation Actions
There is a verse in today's Our Daily Bread reading that really hit me:
"5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
6 In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths." Proverbs 3:5-6
"11 My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord,
Nor detest His correction;
12 For whom the Lord loves He corrects,
Just as a father the son in whom he delights." Proverbs 3:11-12
I've often found myself looking at my life and comparing it to where I think I should be or what I should be doing. I look at events that are going on around me and the direction in which my life has gone and I sometimes say "This doesn't make sense God." The jobs I thought I should have gotten, the relationships that I thought were essential to me but that fell by the wayside and I would say "God, why didn't these things work out?". God knew far better what I needed than I knew myself and so He, in his understanding, did not give me that which I wanted, for that which I really needed. I know have a job that I enjoy, a wife that I love, and good friends who are true friends. I'm glad that God's understanding is better than mine.
Sometimes, though it's even harder to understand God's understanding. I think often of my grandmother's last days in this world. She was a hard worker, a godly woman. She helped shape my faith and bring me to Christ. She raised four wonderful daughters alongside my grandfather and yet she came down with terminal cancer. I was with her in her last week of life and it was hard to watch her suffer, it didn't seem fair or right that God would allow that to happen to her, but there is a reason none the less.
The thing that stuck with me the most from it is the faith that my grandmother had in the end. She kept saying "O Lord my God..." during that week, the first line to the hymn "How great thou art" and was holding onto her faith in the midst of that hurt and pain. She knew whose she was and where she was going and that was an encouragement to me.
In closing, the thing that I most remember was what I will term a God moment, occurred a day or two before she died, that showed me God's presence in the midst of dark times. The family was standing around my grandmother's bed and were singing "Amazing Grace" to her. That day was a dreary, overcast, and damp day, but when we got to the verse
"When we've been there 10,000 yrs
bright shining as the sun
We've no less days to sing God's praise
then when we've first begun."
the skies cleared for that moment and the sun shined in the room on all of us. It was God saying, in that moment, "I am here and remember that there is hope. There is a better day ahead, one in which there will be an eternity ahead with me."
