Devotion 376 - Wind

Sometimes when you are quiet,  sometimes when you are not looking, God just shows up.  And you whisper thank you and you cry and then the day goes on with something sparkling all over it.

It’s almost like the fairy dust my girls sprinkle over life and you pray it doesn’t blow away, because just as quickly as it came, it can go.

Perhaps it is just me, but the winds of faith can come like a gale and then just as easily as they blew in, they can go and with them the covering that was clamped so tight about me.

I reflected as I traveled to the office, it was four years ago this very day, the eve before meeting my second daughter.  There was something in me that had torn in two and like I do, I pasted and taped and prayed and cried, trying to put my heart back together.

God has a way of undoing the security in our lives; you know the security we have built with bank accounts or fences or locks or self confidence.  He comes along and slips life in and the fence falls or the money goes or the doors open or the self confidence fails and we are left in messy little bits.

A new daughter, pictured in a dozen little photos had so gently moved into my heart but everything, I mean everything felt like it was unraveling.  I had gotten comfortable with three children; I had become proud of leaving potty training, and I was not at all sure I could finish what we had started.

 

I held on to God so tight in those hours I could barely breathe for trying to hear his voice.  I wanted to hear that it would be easy, she would love me, and life would be orderly and safe and good.  But God rarely works the way we pray or predict.  He works big and abundant and throws the doors open on our souls such that we can hear His footsteps on the threshold of what we thought our life should be.

All these thoughts from four years ago ran like a steam engine through my mind as I arrived at my office.  I had been on a flight well before sunrise.  I chatted almost none stop with my driver.  Filling the car with words seemed a safer alternative than filling my heart with questions.

I grabbed my bag and entered the side door.  Secretly I hoped I would have a few quiet moments before what I knew would be a taxing meeting.  We are facing the loss of business that has once again torn down my fences and blew winds of insecurity straight through my soul.  All of a sudden, China, adoption, life in general seemed easy compared to the next eight hours.

I walked in.  The lunch room was completely empty save one man across the room.  He turned.  It was our maintenance man who next to my husband walks with the Spirit more than any other person I have ever had the privilege to know.

I felt the wind now at my back pushing me for what God had;  showing up in the least expected moments when my heart felt raw and open and sore.

He spoke and I listened.  We exchanged pleasantries, stories of family and work and then he leaned in and whispered…"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4"

Consider….   Not command, believe, trust, but consider what you are facing, the giant, the problem, the heart ache, the fear, the frustration the loss.  

Consider it to be  j o y.

Imagine that thing, that trial standing across from you.  It does not own you, it does not hold you, it has no power over you.  You just must face it, not run from it, nor cower under it.

 

Oh Jesus I whispered, there will be no joy in this meeting.  I almost laughed at the very thought, but then the wind started to blow.  I could feel His undeniable presence in the promise of those words.  He would not take the trial, or vanquish the battle or eliminate this season, but He would blow through me with the assurance that He stood on my side in the duel.

I have never understood these workings of faith.  I have never comprehended the upside down nature of God. We trust the invisible.  We face what is undo-able, unthinkable, unimaginable and almost unknowingly we find joy.  

Because the beast we face, the ginormous thing that threatens to strangle and stress is not the thing at all.  It is Who we are facing it with.  It is the wind that flies around and above that says, you are exactly right; you are not enough; you don’t stand a chance, but together, we have got this.  Watch Me work.

And we laugh without fear of the future. (Proverbs 31:25)

I am like you dear one.  I don’t want to hurt.  I pray to not suffer.  I would love every day to be bliss and filled with beauty.  But the seasons that have been ugly have done more for this old soul than a lifetime of sweetness could have and for that I am truly grateful and yes, in that gratitude, I am finding joy.

"I hope I can take my wheelchair to heaven with me, I know that's not Biblically correct, but if I were able, I would have my wheelchair up in heaven right next to me when God gives me my brand new, glorified body. And I will then turn to Jesus and say, 'Lord, do you see that wheelchair right there? Well, you were right when you said that in this world we would have trouble, because that wheelchair was a lot of trouble! But Jesus the weaker I was in that thing, the harder I leaned on you. And the harder I leaned on you, the stronger I discovered you to be. So thank you for what you did in my life through that wheelchair. And now,' I always say jokingly, 'you can send that wheelchair to hell, if you want.'" 

Joni Erickson Tada