Take No Good Thing for Granted

Creator-God, Father,

Today we would take no part of your good creation for
granted. We thank you for lungs that absorb your oxygen and release our carbon dioxide.
We thank you for hearts that keep up the rhythm for our pulsing blood. We thank
you for bones that fortify us.

We are grateful today for green plants and blue sky, not to
be taken as our due, but to be received as magnificent gift. Rice, potatoes,
and cassava are your provision. We appreciate trees— cypress, sassafras, maple.
We rest against their trunks, we drink their tea, we savor their sap.

You have set for us a mysterious world to explore. Neutrinos
and quarks; cell nuclei and mitochondria; DNA, RNA, and the human genome. Light,
both wave and particle. Is the variety of color infinite or does it just seem
so?

Every piece of your work shouts your name. Had we ears
to hear, the reverberations would split our eardrums. Today, we want to join
that unheard song of praise. Thank you for listening.

Winter Sustenance

Like ‘50s farm women who canned corn in August for January sustenance,
we can store up God’s word in the cellars of our hearts. Such stored wisdom can
carry us through our spiritual winters. When tragedy and disappointment threaten
to overwhelm our trust in God’s goodness, those summer-stored words can nourish
us.

“Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.” Job’s words
strengthen my faith as I contemplate tragedies around me— the California wildfires, the untimely death of a friend’s child, the catastrophic losses in China and Myanmar. If Job can hope in God in spite of his immense losses, we can too.

Job’s testimony of hope was called up from a summer’s
reserve. He didn’t grow that trust as his children died, his servants perished,
and his crops failed. That faith had grown out of his intimate friendship with God
before those reversals.

Sometimes
we find God in suffering but the road is smoother if we’ve gathered up
sustenance ahead of time. We don’t have to leave the path to find food if we
carry it with us. What scriptures carry you through? What wisdom is tucked away
in the cool basement of your heart?

Here
are two more from my storeroom:
 “The Lord will
rescue me from every evil
attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom.”
2 Ti 4:18
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory
that will be revealed in us.” Ro 8:18

Jesus, please help us store in summer what we’ll need in winter.

A Sure Foundation

“That steel I-beam sure looks strong.” My husband and I had just awakened this morning in the unfinished basement of my daughter’s two-story house.

“It looks strong, but in a fire, wood would only char. That steel is like hard wax–it would melt. A beam of several pine 2x12s nailed and glued together would maintain its structural integrity, even in the flames.”

“So even though the steel looks more stable, wood is better in a fire.

“Yup.”

There’s an image. What’s our foundation made of? Do we look strong or are we really strong? Are we strong in ourselves or strong in the Lord? And how can we know, except in the fire?

Paul says, in 1Corinthians 3, there is one foundation–Jesus Christ. Maybe in our everyday lives, we’re not so aware of our foundations. We manage a busy household, we perform well in a challenging job, and/or we get A’s in graduate school.

But what happens when a child gets leukemia, a new boss fires us, or we sustain a closed-head injury?  Or even the lesser fires of the flu, a critical boss, or a bout of the blues?

What do we rest on then? What supports our weight in those flames? It’s not our good looks. It is the surety of that Jesus-beam that undergirds us. He is the foundation that survives every fire. 

Lord, Isaiah 33:6 says you are “a sure foundation for our times.” May we rest our weight on you.