Soul lifting – Devotion for
Each morning I sit down to do my personal time of devotion, and in my devotion time I utilize a book called A Guide to Prayer, which gives me a theme for the week, a Psalm for the week, daily scripture assignments, and assorted writings to read. Many times the theme for the week really is on target with where I am at that week, and that is truly the case this week, as the theme for this week is “Patience.”
Yesterday was a very difficult day for me. Yesterday we took our sons Jacob and Aaron to camp for the first time. The boys have both talked about how excited they were about camp, and I was out at the camp with them last Thursday night as I preached at the camp worship service that night – and that service made the boys even more excited about going. When we got to the camp yesterday, both guys seemed great, and Jacob quickly was off and running making friends (I’m not sure he even knew we were still there). Aaron, however, was a different story. Granted, Aaron is a couple of years younger than Jacob, but he was much more concerned about staying at camp. He was very reluctant to stay, and more than once said to us that he wanted to just go home with us. Eventually I was able to get Aaron playing with a couple of other little boys, and eventually he began to act like he was having fun. I walked over to him to speak to him about us leaving, and he grabbed hold again and expressed his desire to go home. It really was heart-breaking for us, but Jenn and I knew that for many reasons it was best for Aaron if he stayed. We said our goodbyes, and he went off and played some more while we stood off in the distance watching him to make sure he was going to be OK. By the time we left, we could see Aaron was beginning to be himself and was starting to have fun as he goofed around with the others, and Jacob even came over and was playing with him some.
Last night Jenn and I both felt extremely melancholy. We both just kept worrying about Aaron. Is he going to eat? Is he going to sleep? A thunderstorm came up, and is he going to be OK? The camp had asked me to come out and preach Tuesday night and Thursday night, but Tuesday is our 14th wedding anniversary, so I had told them “no” for Tuesday night – would they now let me come on Tuesday? I told Jenn that this was going to be the longest week of our lives as we are filled with worry over our boys. And now I come in to my devotion time and read about patience.
Isn’t it amazing the way God comes to you at just the right time? Today, the first passage of scripture that I read began, “To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in You I trust” (Psalm 25:1-2a). That meets me exactly where I am at – I am in a point where I just need to lift up my soul to God. I am finding such peace this morning in just being reminded that God can lift us up just as He lifts the sun every morning. I am finding such peace in being reminded that God will use this week to shape and form Jacob and Aaron, and they will receive so many valuable life lessons this week. And I take great joy in knowing that God ordained it to be such a time for me to reminded that I can trust Him, and that I should have patience in His time. As Carlos Carretto says in The God Who Comes, “God comes like the sun in the morning – when it is time. We must assume an attitude of waiting, accepting the fact that we are creatures and not the creator.”
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