God is able to accomplish, provide, help, save, keep, subdue.
He is able to do what you can't.
He already has a plan. God's not bewildered. Go to Him.
Max Lucado
It's 2020! Do you recall looking ahead as a child and thinking about what your life would look like at 2020? What plans did you have for yourself? Where would you be living and who would you be living with? The list goes on of how we coulda, woulda, shoulda landed where we are today. BUT, along came something you didn't plan on.
What rocks your world? I'm not sure, but I think once you've been down the avenue of life's rocky adventures, your world doesn't rock so easily any longer. The news you get today is always compared to the awareness and knowledge of your loved one living a risky life with substances or other earth shattering moments. Perhaps you've received the news that someone you love is in a debilitating situation with their health and you can't see beyond today or believe that there is a chance for healing or a longer life. Maybe you were just notified of a crime that occurred and your loved one was right in the middle of it. Or, the phone rang and it was your own doctor with news you never imagined would be yours. When we are younger and look ahead we surely don't plan for these types of scenarios. And why would we? We'd be living like Eeyore if our horizon was heavy laden all the time with impending storm clouds.
Nothing teaches us more about life than living. Each day has troubles of it's own, the Bible says, so don't go looking ahead for more to add to your burden.
How do I do that, you wonder? Each day remains the same it seems, as if you were stuck in a scene from the Groundhog Day Movie. They leave the house, looking to score, and you cry. Wandering the house alone you find yourself creeping into the bedrooms looking for something, anything, to sort out your thoughts and squelch the impending truths that are lying in your path of cloudy vision. You realize that you see things you don't understand. and you shake your head in bewilderment as if that will help you clear out the chaos in your thinking. But you're so frozen in fear, you don't ask anyone about it because you can't accept what's right in front of your nose. You haven't found a place to land with ears to listen because you're so ashamed about what you think is happening you simply find it impossible to utter a word. You've convinced yourself you're all alone. And the vision plays out the same each day, month, year and decade. Suddenly you're in 2020 and it looks the same as 2015, 2010 and as far back as you can remember.
And you silently scream, how can I believe this statement about God? He's so far removed from my situation, you believe, that He's no help to me. But, eventually you find that you are thinking and talking to God more each day because you have no one else to talk to and nowhere else to go. Is He speaking to me? Is my situation really going to change as He says?
If anything is true, it's the truth that we have choices. And, if we choose to put ourselves into God's hand and change our thinking, OUR situation will change because WE will change. It may not stop the addict from scoring or the drunk from another binge, but we might find our responses to the swill around us can be shifted. Instead of jumping into the pigpen and trying to wrestle with swine, convincing them of another way, we walk on a new path in order to make choices that are good for US. Slowly we learn to side step the puddles lying on our paths.
We begin to gain the peace that God promises, that the world won't understand. How can we have peace in the midst of such chaos? Because we are learning to trust God at His Word that what He says is true. And this trust isn't because of any magic, cosmic energy, aura or karma. God doesn't subscribe to that thinking. The Prince of Peace is above all man-made concoctions of the pathway to peace that doesn't include Him, simply because He IS peace.
So, as we turn the calendar over to a new day, new week, new year and new decade, we also decide to turn our lives and wills over to the care of God. Step Three in a nutshell says: "I can't. God can. I think I'll let Him."
Happy New Day!
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