Good morning…
As it wakes to a new day, sometimes the sky above our backyard looks like the photo I took last week. Unique colors are exquisitely well defined. Breathtaking beauty is shockingly undeniable. Joy, hope, peace feel boldly embodied.
This morning the sky caught my eye for a totally different reason. When I stepped out onto our back porch, this is what I saw. Taken from the same location as the colorful sunrise above, around the same time in the morning, today’s photo below captures the sky silently sparking different emotions. Grey. Dark. Dreary. Muddied. Uncertain. Mysterious. Heavy. Hollow. Unfinished.
Having gotten my attention, the Spirit kept speaking. As I waited for my brewing coffee, I opened an email on my phone. “Thought you would get a kick out of this prayer,” a forever friend wrote. She shared a story that put words to this morning’s sunrise.
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A Story For A Gray Day
A while back I read a story of a visiting pastor who attended a men’s breakfast in the middle of a rural farming area of the country. The group had asked an older farmer, decked out in bib overalls, to say grace for the morning breakfast: “Lord, I hate buttermilk,” the farmer began.
The visiting pastor opened one eye to glance at the farmer and wonder where this was going.
The farmer loudly proclaimed, “Lord, I hate lard.” Now the pastor was growing concerned.
Without missing a beat, the farmer continued, “And Lord, you know I don’t much care for raw white flour.”
The pastor once again opened an eye to glance around the room and saw that he wasn’t the only one to feel uncomfortable.
Then the farmer added, “But Lord, when you mix them all together and bake them, I do love warm fresh biscuits. So Lord, when things come up that we don’t like, when life gets hard, when we don’t understand what you’re saying to us, help us to just relax and wait until you are done mixing. It will probably be even better than biscuits. Amen.”
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“Within that prayer there is great wisdom for all when it comes to complicated situations like we are experiencing in the world today,” my friend wrote. “Let’s stay strong in God’s strength, because our life is being mixed with lots of things that we don’t really care for…….relax……and wait……until God’s mixing is done.”
Quietly we wait with God as our heart is being gradually transformed, over time, in God’s time. I am convinced and sure of this very thing, that He Who began a good work in you will continue until the day of Jesus Christ [right up to the time of His return], developing [that good work] and perfecting and bringing it to full completion in you (Philippians 1:6, AMPC).
Whatever mixed emotions each new day elicits, together we trust that God is doing a mighty work within and among us. Then Jesus told another story: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman mixes into a big bowl of flour. The yeast makes all the dough rise” (Matthew 13:33, ICB).
Don’t overlook the obvious here, friends. With God, one day is as good as a thousand years, a thousand years as a day. God isn’t late with his promise as some measure lateness. He is restraining himself on account of you, holding back the End because he doesn’t want anyone lost. He’s giving everyone space and time to change (2 Peter 3:8-9, MSG).
…Sue…
