and make music to your name, O Most High,
proclaiming your love in the morning
and your faithfulness at night,
When the bills pile high and the day gets crazy.
It is hard to praise.
When your son is killed and you watch your children grieve, it is hard to give thanks and praise.
Yet God continually encourages us to Praise Him through it all.
My farmer wants to feel positive about things.
Everything he looks at is broken or needs repair.
There’s nothing he enjoys.
It is a battle.
We try to find something good.
It is work.
Now with another hard loss.
Someone serving our family.
Called home.
It seems too much to bear.
So we go to what we know.
We try to find the blessing.
Even equipment break downs can be positive;
It could have been worse.
Sometimes it is so hard to see the good.
Farming is unpredictable.
It is a life lived on the edge.
Usually invigorating.
No day like another.
But when you’re world is turned upside down.
Putting it to rights takes effort.
Effort that doesn’t come easy these days.
Do you struggle with your days? Has the joy escaped you?
Is it work to find the good?
We can start small. Like I did the day Elijah traveled home.
I got in the shower and I thanked God for the shower handles, the shampoo, hot water etc.
It was a step.
A way to Praise. A way to keep moving forward.
And that’s what we need to do.
We are still here.
God has not called us to himself yet.
He is allowing all these other pieces to happen.
We need to wait with expectancy for what He will do.
Because aren’t all our days lived on the edge?
Find that space where you can be still.
Where God can breathe new life into you;
life abundant so you can pour into others.
Look for opportunities to serve.
Invite God to show up; to guide you where there is a need.
We are kept.
He will fill the void.
Hope.
He will restore the joy.
In His timing.
In His way.
Isaiah 43:19
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
“We’re asking why this happens to us who have died to live.
It’s unfair.
This is what it means to be held
How it feels
When the sacred is torn from life and you survive.
This is what it means to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
we’d be held. “
You continually help me Tammy, in my struggles. You point me to the One who will give life, and give it abundantly, even in pain and suffering. Thank you for reminding me of that today.