Dryness

It's been a dry time. I'm not really sure when the moisture slipped away and the ground became hard and cracked, I only know that I am thirsty...

Four years ago I felt the presence of God. He was close, He was near, and He was speaking to my heart. In early 2009 He whispered to my heart and I knew that He would be there to carry me through the storm that lay ahead. I couldn't see down the road and around the bend, but I knew He held me tight and I know He continues to hold me today, even though my heart often feels like a hardened lump of clay.

The past several years have brought a multitude of tests and trials from my father's cancer diagnosis and death four weeks later, to a change in churches and family challenges. Life, unlike our Father in heaven, can be cold and indifferent. Life doesn't slow down when circumstances around us are spinning out of control. Time marches on and so must we, often at a faster clip than we ever imagined possible.

Gratitude... Although the world spins on and it often feels as though chaos reigns, I can be thankful that God is still in control. My heart, though possibly dry, is not really a hardened lump. God hasn't let that happen. He's growing roots deep within, the kind of roots that hold one steady when all of life literally is out of control. I thought the other day of our lawn, which during a normal summer turns dry and brown. It looks dead and feels dry and crunchy, but when the rain comes it isn't long before it once again grows lush and green. If God so looks after the grass (Matthew 6:30), then I can be sure He hasn't forsaken me.

God always knows just what I need. Tonight I looked back through my Blogdom and found some answers to my own questions in my own writing. The world spins, yes, but so does the lump on the potter's wheel and hadn't I prayed to be flexible? Hadn't I wanted Him to shape and mold my heart and life? And doesn't that time of drying come after the potter has shaped the vessel? Perhaps I've just been "set on the shelf" for a time. Maybe it's not really the kind of dryness I'd imagined. Maybe it's the kind that come just before the pitcher is ready to be filled... Maybe...

Yet you, LORD, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. 

Isaiah 64:8