God Speaking

God Speaking

“God is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.” Psalm 73:26

Like the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings, when I saw the devastation from the tornados in Oklahoma this week, I had to turn the TV off. It breaks my heart to see so many people hurt. Like you, I am also asking the question, “why, Lord?”

I was reading one of my historical Christian romance novels, a story about a recent tragedy in the family, and a character in the book stated, “All that’s good comes from God. All that’s bad, the sorrow and the pain, is but a natural part of life – or rises from our own sin and failings…Yet God is everywhere, in the sorrow and the joy.”

I have come to realize that some things have to happen in life, good and bad, to get us where we need to be in order to receive our blessing and to be a blessing to others. We don’t always understand because we are not in control.

When we pray, we don’t know God’s plan to fix things, or how he is letting things proceed naturally. I believe that when I receive a blessing, that I’m not the only one being blessed fromthat “shower” of blessings. Because we are sometimes so “selfish”, we think we are the only ones going through, and therefore, are the only ones that got through when the blessing arrived.

For instance, when you’re wondering how that bill is going to be paid, and then all of sudden that rebate check comes in the mail.Or when there is a miraculous cure for a disease or ailment. You are not the only one to benefit from the shower. I know this may seem farfetched, but think about it – While you’re praying for relief from your ailment, the doctor treating you is praying for a breakthrough in his career, and his wife is praying for her husband to be relieved from stress.  The cure for your ailment has just showered a blessing upon an entire family.

Sometimes there are blessings in the midst of a tragedy – someone was praying for protection from foreclosure, someoneneeded counseling after a tragedy. A home destroyed by a natural disaster may be the relief a family needed from foreclosure, or someone who experienced a great tragedy devotes the rest of their lives counseling others who experienced similar tragedies. While none of us want to be in the mist, we don’t know the “big” picture. We don’t know where the “shower” must fall.

A minister mentioned to me once that sometimes a family has to go through an unthinkable tragedy in order to become closer orto even save a marriage. God has many ways of getting our attention. Mandisa said it best in her song God Speaking:

“Have you ever lost a loved one
Who you thought should still be here
Do you know what it feels like
To be tangled up in fear
What if He's somehow involved
What if He's speaking through it all

Who knows how He'll get a hold of us
Get our attention to prove He is enough
He'll do and He'll use
Whatever He wants to
To tell us "I love you"

His ways are higher
His ways are better
Though sometimes strange
What could be stranger
Than God in a manger”

I am in no ways relieved by our recent tragedies, nor do I have an explanation for them all. I have to live by faith and trust thatit is all part of a larger plan that I cannot begin to understand.

“He is all we can ever depend on, and we must strive always to seek Him and cling to Him. The rest...family, friends, our meager accomplishments—are but way stations on the road home. At their best, they help gladden our hearts and strengthen us on the journey.” 

Quotes used are from Child of Promise by Kathleen Morgan