I am at Lakeview for a pre-retirement seminar, and all is well with the world. It is morning (and I’m still alive — whoo-hoo!) and East Texas is beautiful. It turns out that my 12 years of retirement investment as an ordained person will probably keep me and Janette from the homeless shelter — that’s even with the bad turn we had these last two years. So all is well with the world.
But I recognize this trap — letting outside circumstances determine my inner mood. Maybe someday I will be free of that emotional encumbrance. Meanwhile, I have to think of Ann Scherer’s devotional, based on Isaiah 12:
Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.
When my mother was carrying me (or my brother, I forget the details of this story), pre-birth, in 1940 (or 1942), her neighbor exclaimed, “Oh, Mary, why are you bringing a child into this terrible world?”
As Ann comments on the same scripture, probably every generation has felt similarly about “this terrible world.”
And, as Ann said to me in an e-mail, “It’s that part about not being in control and letting someone else (God) be in control that gets me every time.”
But there you are. God’s not done with you yet. Breathe this prayer to yourself until you begin to believe it. Let’s God’s sunshine hit the back of your eyeballs and your brain.
God is my salvation. I can trust and not be afraid. God is my strength and might; he is my salvation.
Repeat part of that to yourself tonight as you go to sleep.
