Liz’s Morning Devotional based upon Upper Room
March 13, 2022
Read Psalm 139:13-18
13 You are the one who created my innermost parts; you knit me together while I was still in my mother’s womb. 14 I give thanks to you that I was marvelously set apart. Your works are wonderful—I know that very well. 15 My bones weren’t hidden from you when I was being put together in a secret place when I was being woven together in the deep parts of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my embryo, and on your scroll, every day was written that was being formed for me before any one of them had yet happened. 17 God, your plans are incomprehensible to me! Their total number is countless! 18 If I tried to count them—they outnumber grains of sand! If I came to the very end—I’d still be with you.
Good Morning! Have you not heard? God is with us always!
Despite the number of times we read and hear that God is with us always, we have times of feeling alone. David reminds us that God is with us from even before we were known until the end time. It’s truly unfathomable to our human understanding. Really? How can this be? 1 In the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. John 1:1-4
In one of my class discussions, we talked about the Word and its use as a verb. God is action always moving forward while moving among us. God picks us up when we fall down. God goes back and retrieves those who are lost, but all the while moving forward. Nothing with God is stagnant! As humans, we want to understand every detail, but we are not yet ready for such a revelation. God reveals glimpses of wisdom and knowledge as we are ready.
What about those times of weakness that we all encounter? There are an infinite number of sources for our doubts. We are humans, and as such, we are frail. We have doubts rooted in our physical domain when our bodies start to break down from illness or accidents. We have emotional doubts when our plans don’t work out as we imagine because we forget that God’s plan for our lives does not always follow our own timelines. We think that we want to be and that we can be in control of everything, and we are very resistant to turning over that control.
Perhaps the most challenging of our doubts are our spiritual doubts when we lose faith in God. This sometimes happens when something happens in our own lives or in the world around us and we think that a loving God could never allow such a thing to happen. Our spiritual beings also include all of our physical and emotional realms, and it is easy to fall into despair when we are weakened by all that life seems to throw at us.
How are we to overcome all of this? The answer is simple but also hard. We, as humans, cannot possibly do this on our own. First, we must climb out of the darkness and move into the light as we give ourselves fully to God. There is no way to sugarcoat this, this is hard because our human virtues, like pride, get in the way. God, who made us, knows that we can’t do this on our own.
God places angels and saints among us to lead us back to the one body, the community of faith so that we can share in the love and support of the believers and find our way back to peace. The peace that comes only from God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Rejoice in the understanding that God promises to always love us and be with us no matter what. When God seems far from us, remember, God is as close as a prayer.
Loving God, Thank You for loving us. Sometimes we have doubts and our faith falters. Even when we know you are there waiting, we don’t ask for you to help. Thank you for being patient with us and always loving us. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen
Thought for the day: When I feel abandoned by God, I can turn to faithful friends for reassurance.
God loves us! Pastor Liz
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