Saturday, January 28, 2012

January 28th

Gosh, life would be sweet if I could just take my own advice! Heh.

These last few days, I've felt a growing sense of peace and contentment in my life.

This passage keeps coming into my mind:

"To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven"
-Ecclesiastes 3:1

And then I found this, and read it in many different translations. Ecclesiastes is just a tricky book, but this passage is so haunting, somehow:

"What do people really get for all their hard work? I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God.

"And I know that whatever God does is final. Nothing can be added to it or taken from it. God’s purpose is that people should fear him. What is happening now has happened before, and what will happen in the future has happened before, because God makes the same things happen over and over again."
-Ecclesiastes 3:9-15 New Living Translation

And yet, the Father is the same that joyfully proclaims to Israel,

"Do not remember the former things,
Nor consider the things of old.
Behold, I will do a new thing,
Now it shall spring forth;
Shall you not know it?
I will even make a road in the wilderness
And rivers in the desert."
-Isaiah 43:18-21

And at the end of time, it is the Father who declares in complete triumph-

"Behold, I make all things new."

Ah, paradox. My God is a beautiful mystery and so is His book.

Keith is outside, the sleeves of his flannel shirt rolled up, washing the vehicles, as he loves to do on a sunny Saturday morning. The sudsy water washes down the driveway, reflecting the winter blue of the sky.

I am inside, listening to Van Morrison, drinking coffee and wondering about the mysteries and love and ways of God- which I probably always will do.

I can't help myself. It was how I was made, because it was the good pleasure of Jesus to make me this way. How I do love Him for it.