Abandon yourself

We enjoyed having Sarah, Maya and Cora with us for a few days this week. Maya was off school for teachers' institute days. It was good to have them here and it was very active and busy. We are thankful Sarah is willing to make the five hour drive over here with the girls by herself. Cora who is three gave the quote of the visit; "Grandpa says every meal comes with a dessert." The girls, their mom and their grandma and grandpa each like their sweets. Next weekend we drive to Chicago to help care for Maya and Cora while their parents celebrate Sarah's big birthday. While there we will also watch Juliana's Trinity College volleyball team in a tournament at Judson College which is by Elgin IL. Sorry we won't get to see Emma play this time. Life is surely busy for us and we are most thankful to be able to do what we do. We continue our volunteer work at Ditto and I do my 10 plus hours a week doing pastoral visitation for our Pillar Church family.

Thomas a Kempis writes: "My dear friend, abandon yourself, and you will find [the LORD God]. Give up your will and every title to yourself, and you will always come out ahead, for greater grace will be yours the moment you turn yourself over to God once and for all."

The contemporary spiritual director Edward Hays writes concerning finding God: "If we are to experience God, we must be open to God, to the mystical, to the divine, appearing in our lives. And we must have an openness that is free of any preconditions about how that will happen. Looking for God in a godly form is the great historical mistake." In other words we are going to experience God and find God in unexpected and surprising ways and experiences. We need to be ready for God to touch and enter our lives in any and every moment and probably when we least expect it.

So God may surprise you as He did me in the following from Oswald Chambers written in the early 1900's: "When we are born again, the Holy Spirit begins to work His new creation in us, and there will come a time when there is not a bit of the old order left, the old solemnity goes, the old attitude to things goes, and all things are of God. How are we going to get the life that has no lust, no self-interest, no sensitiveness to pokes, the love that is not provoked, that thinketh no evil, that is always kind? The only way is by allowing not a bit of the old life to be left, but only simple perfect trust in God, such trust that we no longer want God's blessings, but only want Himself. Have we come to the place where God can withdraw His blessings and it does not affect our trust in Him? When once we see God at work, we will never bother our heads about things that happen, because we are actually trusting in our Father in Heaven Whom the world cannot see."

This I think is what Habakkuk was saying when he penned these inspired words in the third chapter of the book which bears his name: "Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God, the LORD, is my strength; He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights."

So we do what God says and and we say what God does for the glory of God knowing that in God's will is our peace. May that peace belong to each of you!