Normal

In my last post, I said that I think life is finally getting back to normal. I lied and I knew it. I knew that life will not be normal for quite some time now.

Our pastor, my boss, my mentor and my friend told me that he is leaving after 21 years of ministry. He got a district job. Yeah for him! Ugh for me.

Change. We know it is a part of life, so why is it so hard to accept?
Trust. We know that we can trust God and that we are suppose to and when we do, we are better for it, so why is it difficult?
Faith. It is the journey we are called to by a God who is always faithful, so so why do we so quickly forget?
Hope. It is the gift we have as a result of a promise from our heavenly Father, so why do we lose it?

Normal. We want it so bad, and we will do everything in our power to keep it that way. Yet when we choose to follow God with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength, the only normal thing should be to want Him more than anything.

Last night when I was in one of the low moments, I opened my Bible. (No I am not a great Christian that always turns to the Lord in difficult times. I really wanted to turn on the TV and drown it all out. But God in His mercy, gave me a guilt trip :)
I knew I should let God speak into my pittymiss moment. So as I turned the pages to see where I should read. I contemplated the New Testament letters where I usually go, but I didn't want to be told what to do, So I flipped back to the Psalms. I figured that I could find a good 'woe is me' psalm that David wrote that I could really use to encourage my moment. I landed on Psalm 73. The only verse highlighted there was verse 25 "Whom have I in heaven but You? And earth has nothing I desire besides You." Wow. Nothing like snapping me back to reality.

God knows that change will be fine because He is our stability. Trust and faith are natural when all we see is Him. Hope is where we live every moment because we know that the day begins and ends with God and everything that happens in between will fade away and really doesn't matter.

So as I think back to an earlier post where I was hoping for normal again, I no longer care. When I long for a normal life, I get less than full engagement with God. God knows that we can never get to the place written about in Psalm 73:25 where we desire NOTHING else besides Him, unless we stop valuing "normal."