The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away! May the name of the Lord be praised. [Job 1:21b (GW)]
After struggling with the writing of a devotion, it was finally finished. Thankful, I listed its completion in my gratitude journal that night. The next morning, I discovered it was lost—vanished into thin air and nowhere to be found (and believe me, I tried)! Looking back, I probably cut the devotion from my “Work On” file but got distracted and never pasted it into my “To Post” file. Unfortunately, by the time I discovered my error, both files had been saved in versions without the words over which I’d labored so long. When it became clear that those paragraphs truly had vanished into the black hole of my computer, I was annoyed with myself and upset, upset enough to want that thanks entry crossed out in my gratitude journal!
“Hold it!” said that inner voice. “Do the troubles of today negate the joys of yesterday? Just because you no longer have something, is that reason to stop being thankful for once having it? Remember, thanking Him for everything means for both gain and loss!” Oops. Sometimes, God teaches me lessons the hard way!
We all make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes cause us to lose far more than several hours and a few paragraphs—we can lose friendships, marriages, custody, jobs, health or houses. Sometimes, errors can be repaired and lost things recovered but not everything can be mended or retrieved. Nevertheless, we must never stop being thankful for what once was, no matter how briefly we held it. It’s not God’s fault when we mismanage His blessings. That we can learn from our mistakes is more reason for gratitude!
Thank you, Heavenly Father, for all that has happened in our lives—the good, the bad and everything in between. Some events were welcomed as beautiful gifts and others were less appreciated as lessons, but we were blessed by them all.
I’m most proud of the blessings that God has bestowed upon me, in my life. He’s given me the vision to truly see that you can fall down, but you can still get back up. Hopefully I’ll learn from my mistakes and have the opportunity to strengthen and improve the next thing I do. [Martin Lawrence]
I’m in the midst of reading a series of seven children’s fantasy novels, The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis. Some of them, like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I read as a girl but others are new to me. The world of Narnia is a world to which one wants to return again and again and I’m enjoying my visit ever so much. C.S. Lewis, however, was much more than a writer of fantasy, non-fiction and poetry; he was a well-known lecturer, a brilliant scholar and a renowned Christian apologist.
The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world. [Psalm 19:1-4 (NLT)]
I found an odd synchronicity in my morning’s reading. The verse for the day was Matthew 7:12, the Golden Rule: “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you.” Following that was a story by Christian author and speaker Lysa Terkeurst. She wrote about speaking to a group when a woman walked up on stage, stood next to her, and then leaned into her. Standing before an audience of 6,500 women, unsure of what to do, the author simply put her arm around the woman and continued speaking. The woman later said she needed God and thought if she got close enough to the Christian speaker, she just might feel Him. The third portion of my reading included the above selection from C.S. Lewis’ writings.
The words Soli Deo gloria, meaning “glory to God alone,” were the words at the end of the actor’s bio in the show’s playbill. The addition of those three words in his brief resume was the actor’s way of acknowledging the source of his talent and dedicating his work to God’s glory. I thought of those words when someone flattered me recently. While I knew “Glory to God alone,” was not the right response, I wasn’t sure what was.
An interview with God would appear to be a journalist’s dream opportunity! As I started thinking of questions, I realized I wouldn’t want to know the answers for many. I don’t want to know when or how I’ll die and I certainly wouldn’t want to be privy to that information about anyone else. I wouldn’t want to know exactly what will become of friends who don’t believe or who will go where at judgment. A friend said he might ask how he was doing but, fully aware of his failings, realized he probably wouldn’t want to hear God’s answer. Some friends in Chicago might want to ask Him about the Cubs but, unless they were gamblers, knowing the answer would be a season spoiler. There is much that God could tell me that I wouldn’t want to know because I could never live with the weight of His answers.
Devotions of the Heart 