Always God is At Work

I have friends who call me “compulsive.”  I prefer to think I like things done in an orderly manner, and I think better when they are.  I shun trivia because I need an outline or a timeline to hang my thoughts on.  God knows and understands me though, and I have been amazed at how He has brought an ongoing healing to my life.  As a younger adult, I was still confused by the inner turmoil of childhood dysfunction and abuse, and by the faulty concepts of God I was holding on to.  And all of that climaxed with the death of my infant daughter.  When I came to a place that my own efforts gave up because they were only complicating the turmoil and etching its consequences still more deeply within me, I finally became fully honest with God and in my God-focused brokenness, I immersed myself as He began unfolding the answers I needed.  Slowly.  Intentionally.  Definitively.  One step at a time.  Truth building on truth.  The layers of the onion being peeled, and beauty and purpose emerging from the stink – literally.  I look back now and I am so aware that God had always been present, preparing, readying, eager to unfold His answers.

He did that for Zacchaeus, the wee little man who climbed the sycamore tree when he wanted to see Jesus.  Being a chief tax collector, and rich at the expense of others who had little, he was disliked and demeaned.  But God had answers for Zacchaeus too, and He had lessons to teach still others through Zacchaeus.  God prepared a sycamore tree, designed for short little men to climb, and Zacchaeus climbed because his heart wanted something he couldn’t yet understand, and Jesus responded with an intentional, definitive invitation – an invitation that brought joy and excitement, and a changed life.  God had always been present, preparing and readying.

God prepared Carlos to be present at the McDonald’s in Walmart when my husband, out and about on a just-him Monday afternoon, became fully disoriented and unaware of where he was or what he was doing.  Carlos, a stranger to me, but not to God, intervened in ways God had prepared, to give my husband the help he needed.  

Like the trees in Psalm 1 with their roots drawing from the river waters, bearing fruit, and never withering, or like the love Paul describes to the Ephesians, a love drawn from God’s Spirit, made real by the indwelling presence of Christ, empowering, enabling, healing and nurturing us, God is at work, always present, preparing and readying, eager to unfold His answers, eager to provide, eager to give what is needed – one day at a time, intentionally, definitively.

                                                                                                       – Bev

(Related Bible reading: Luke 19:1-10; Psalm 1:1-3; Ephesians 3:16-20)