Going Green

Is has been a year now that our house has been up for sale and on February 14 we moved into our new home.  We became the owners of two homes.  There was a reason we never owned two homes before, there was a reason we never bought a vacation house and it’s because we can’t afford it!

We kept believing that as the time drew nearer to move, our home for sale would miraculously sell; we thought somehow we deserved to have it sell so we could move on with our lives, we thought we deserved not to have to worry about  weeding or cutting the grass fifty miles away, we thought we deserved to have money to pay the bills, we thought we deserved to live in ease and comfort, we thought God understood all this.  We wanted to be looking back at how everything just fell into place and sweetly smile and say, “Isn’t God good.”  We’re not there yet… but I have learned some things  along the way, good things.

Make no mistake, I do not have my act together on trusting God; I was about ready to cry a puddle of tears when the library told me I had a $15 dollar charge on overdue books.  Do I sound like I’m whining?    It is so much easier to display peace that passes understanding when you have money to back it up.

Some time back I came to the conclusion that I do not need to be God’s public relations gal; He doesn’t need my help to make Him look good. I did not need to put on rose colored glasses and exclaim everything perfect.   I did not have to pretend something was wonderful when the reality of it was that it, well, it sucked.  

And yet, I was not off the hook.  I don’t get the go ahead to wallow in self pity and despair.  I don’t have to like the trials I’m put through or pretend to be glad for them but I am called on to trust God, not  money, not  health, not  intelligence, not  talent.  And it is very easy to say I am trusting God and another thing altogether when I have to live that I trust God, when God throws a monkey wrench in my very lovely ordered life and says, “Now trust Me;” that’s when we are revealed. 

A few verses in Jeremiah 17 suddenly become crystal clear:

“Cursed is the man who trusts in man
And makes flesh his strength,
Whose heart departs from the LORD.
For he shall be like a shrub in the desert,
And shall not see when good comes,
But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness,
In a salt land which is not inhabited.                                                                                                

Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
And whose hope is in the LORD.
For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters,
Which spreads out its roots by the river,
And will not fear when heat comes:
But its leaf will be green,
And will not be anxious in the year of drought,
Nor will cease from yielding fruit.”

And shall not see when good comes… (dagger to my heart!)  We can become so focused on the trial, ruminating on it from the moment we wake up until we go to bed, making sure we wake up in the night to put in a little more time, that we can’t see any good- ever and consequently become like a dry piece of sagebrush… in a salt land. That’s pretty dead. We can be so overly focused on the trial that we miss the innumerable blessings.  But when we shift our focus from dwelling on and being consumed by our trials and instead hope in the Lord, we become like a tree planted by water, thriving.  

We  are not asked to be idiots thinking that the trial is a load of laughs, but neither can we let the trials be the focus of our life.  That’s hard.  No, we don’t need to be God’s PR man but we do need to trust God without being anxious. Doing so in the small things will make it easier when big things hit; the tree planted by the waters will spread out its roots and thrive.  

 ”If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small”  (Ps.24:10)  And really, it is just a house, I mean two houses, really not all that monumental in the way of adversity.

Remind me of this tomorrow… 

Like a tree planted planted by waters