I’m Blessed

This week I’m reflecting not so much on what I have been given, but what God is allowing me to witness.

We’ve had days of fog last week.  I’ve never experienced such a bout of fog before.  We have not seen much snow this year.  In fact, we just got word this morning that the kids’ ski race next weekend has been canceled.  It has been an unusual winter, but I’m grateful for the frost that has turned everything white.  It seems as though it cannot be winter until everything is whited out at least one way or the other.

 Looking behind our house into the woods has the feeling of reading a story about an enchanted land. 

 The whiteness drips from everything possible.  I wonder if the animals know the beauty in which they live.  I wonder if they gasp in awe at God’s decorating for their home.

 The hoary trees with their black bases splitting smaller as it grows upward looks like a pale and aged hand, but where the blood still brings life.

 Not a detail was missed.  No blade of grass was forgotten.  Not a single leaf stubbornly clinging to a branch thus far avoided the frost. 

 It has the feeling as though God is preparing his canvas of Spring.  Spring is a feast for the eyes, and Winter serves as a great foil for that.  It makes the colors then seem even brighter.

 This last week a friend of mine in town found out her 3 year old son has stage 4 cancer.  Through tears, I read my devotional that night, and read these words:

“My child, I have a message for you today.  Let me whispter it in your ear so any storm clouds that may arise will shine with glory, and the rough places you may have to walk will be made smooth.  It is only four words, but let them sink into your inner being, and use them as a pillow to rest your weary head.  ‘This is my doing.’

 Have you ever realized that whatever concerns you concerns Me too?…I want you to learn when temptations attack you, and the enemy comes in “like a pent-up flood” (Isa. 59:19), that ‘this is my doing‘ and that your weakness needs My strength and your safety lies in letting Me fight for you…The pain will leave as you learn to see Me in all things.”

My devotional is many writings collected by L.B. Cowman who was a missionary with her husband in Asia many years ago.  They had to leave the mission field because of her husband’s health, and return to the states.  There, for the next 6 years she watched her husband slowly die in much pain and suffering.  These collections are her searching for God and faith in that time of her life.  It was the means in which God comforted her when she didn’t understand why God would remove them from the mission field, and why would he let suffering and death to someone she loved.

As horrid as it sounds that this storm in our community and most certainly in their family’s life, God has control over it.  It makes you want to punch God in anger like a toddler against his daddy’s chest, then when you run out of energy to do that, you begin to rest out of exhaustion.  You begin to remember who your Daddy is, His character, His trustworthiness, and you begin to see, He is just preparing the canvas.

He is about to do something great, and He’s preparing the canvas for us to see.

 Already, I think this family is overwhelmed with comfort.  I think it caught us all off guard how it would draw such a large community of believers together.  I think the comfort to us all caught us off guard.  It came so quickly.  I saw one friend write something like: “If prayer is like incense, than there is a dense fog over our town tonight.”

Then the fog actually, physically came.  I wonder if a fog of prayer has the same effect.  It came and whited out everything in site.  It brought to anticipation a rainbow of Spring God is going to paint before our eyes.  It once again reminded me that God sees every blade of grass.  He has a plan.  This did not catch Him off guard. He knows that when this is all said and done, regardless of outcome, we will gasp at the beauty of it.  We will see His glory.

I’m blessed to be a witness.

If you’d like to share your blessings, please share!  Leave a comment, or link your blog.  To link your blog:
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-link to your specific blog post below so that if someone reads it days later, they’re reading the right post.