Relentless Love

Change produces its own challenges.  But pair that with a schedule where every bit seems urgent and life can roll into a mess of tangled hairballs. 

I'm reminded that though we make our plans, God orchestrates our lives, often with difficulties.  These trials can be for the refining gold of our character, but sometimes they are simply to bring us to the end of ourselves.  God continually longs for our undivided attention, and the shaking calls us to reach for Him.     

For the last few days I've been contemplating the mercy of God as seen through the upheaval of our lives.  It is like the judgement of the last days.  The earth will undergo tremendous shaking, God's wrath poured out.  But it will also demonstrate God's mercy, His urgent pleading, a last ditch effort for mankind to seek Him.  

Every breath we breathe is a gift from God, a display of His mercy.  Every day another chance to glorify Him.  As I think about a man, a friend of my in-laws, who suddenly died rejecting Christ, I'm reminded that God's Spirit will not always strive with us.  There comes a point where we've received our chance to follow and have made our decision.  I believe God earnestly sought this man's attention through the death of his children, and the witness of my in-laws, but still he rejected God's great salvation.   

My prayer is that I would be wholly devoted to God in the now, that He would not have to take drastic measures to get my attention.  I long for closer relationship with Him.  Not necessarily blessings, experiences, emotional highs, or revelations . . . only Him.

I was scarcely home this summer.  For that reason, it was hard, at times, to maintain quiet times with the Lord.  I sense a slight drawing apart in my relationship with Him.  But I hear Him in the shaking up of my life.  I can sense the longing in His voice and the grace in His eyes. . . favor, that relentlessness love chasing after me.  My soul cannot resist and I run to Him.  There I find security, a place of rest for my cares.

As the calendar rolls its demands, and school papers are signed, saying I will have my child at this concert, at that game, and for this behavior, I can be confident that ultimately God's plans will prevail.  The schedule may seem to rule my life, but relationship with God is where abundant life kicks in.  And that, my friend, is real living. 

"As the deer pants for streams of water, 
so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God..." 
Psalm 42:1-2