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- Written by: Don Goulding
Even some of the wise will stumble, resulting in their refinement, purification, and cleansing until the time of the end, for it is still for the appointed time. (Daniel 11:35)
Tambudzai, with her beautiful white smile, was from the Shona tribe. She worked as a housemother at the orphanage in Zimbabwe. Dani gave Tambudzai yarn and discovered she could knit, without a written pattern, like no artist we’ve known. Regardless of fighting children, yammering coworkers, or singing songs, Tambudzai never lost track. If she changed one stitch in the bottom hem, it was the beginning of a pattern that would crisscross other cables to end at the shoulder.
God weaves the details of our lives into his pattern for history. Life may appear random with its disruptions and bad decisions, but, like Tambudzai’s knitting, God’s sovereignty never misses a stitch. Human failings and demonic mutinies become the contrast rows that raise up his beautiful purposes. The garment he is working has a shape and length he held in his mind from before the universe began.
The trouble I will encounter today won’t be a meaningless oversight. It will be a refining stitch dropped on cue so my response can be included in the grand design. My choices will embellish God’s eternal article.
Today’s test is already on its way, I see it coming. Now is the time to set my intentions to bring glory to Jesus. And yet, if I fail, the garment isn’t ruined. For the wise who seek God, he changes mistakes into stitches of learning. Even ugly failure becomes elegant victory. Such is the mastery of history’s Artist.
Prayer: Sovereign Lord, I celebrate your artistry in weaving my life into history.
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- Written by: Don Goulding
You give them drink from your river of delights. For with you is the fountain of life. (Psalms 36:8, 9) (NIV)
Poor thirsty creature, her tongue hung to the dust. My golden retriever stayed at my heel, but she kept glancing at the creek like she wanted to slide down the bank into the water.
“Just a bit more,” I said.
It was best if she held her thirst. We were headed home where our swimming pool brimmed with rainwater. And I knew my dog. She couldn’t lap up some creek and be on her way. Instead, she’d wade into it, tromp in the mud, and need a bath, which we both hated. So I kept her close. Still, the creek called to her.
My life story is in that dog’s thirst. In the Bible, water represents life, splashing, satiating life. The books of Ezekiel and Revelation give us peeks at the river of life flowing from the throne of God. I long to swim in that river. I’ve craved it all my days. Even the few drops now soothing my being are my world—they define the real me.
Along the trail, God’s earthly gifts provide murmurs of life. But the purity of those mouthfuls has been muddied by a fallen world, and by my own slopping in sin. I take clean pleasures and overindulge them into muck. Yet, my thirst continues so powerful I twitch, tempted to jump into the polluted trickle and get at life, now.
Then I hear the solace of Jesus. “We’re almost home. Bolting will only get you filthy and miserable. Stay by my side a little longer, because turquoise pools of living water await you.”
Prayer: Great Companion, I’m ready for the plunge, but help me wait
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- Written by: Don Goulding
God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. (Acts 17:27) (NIV)
Grandmother Sky awoke before the sun, dusted rouge on her eastern cheeks, and readied herself for the daily entertainment. She loved to watch the courtship between the sun and the flowers below.
The sunflowers had pined through the night over the absence of their beloved. Now they faced the place where he would rise again. As the sun’s first rays streamed over the hills, the sunflowers rose up. Their yellow heads followed every inch of his movement until by evening they faced west. Then they turned back to the east and awaited his return.
What Grandmother Sky witnessed was a living analogy. The mature believer is not measured by the attainment of perfection, but by the stretch of their reach.
Young sunflowers are heliotropic. That is, they track the sun. Daylight causes a chemical reaction that pumps more water into the cells on the shadow side of the stem. This pushes the head toward the sun.
I need to be heliotropic. I must pump truth into my darkest side until my head turns to urgently face Christ.
Jesus deserves passionate followers, not apathetic sleepers. That’s why his Spirit speaks in whispers and by varied means. If I always knew how he was going to communicate, only that one area of my life would be attentive. As it is, I must draw out my intellect in Bible study, extend my spirit in prayer, and exert my heart to hear God’s wisdom through others. Every area of my life must strain after the Son.
I hope Grandmother Sky will one day look down, see me reaching, and say, “There he is, another sonflower.”
Prayer: Shining Messiah, I will reach for you with all that I am.