[Acknowledgement]

Acknowledgement

Sunlight streams through my window. Beautiful life-giving light. [In that day] they will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun for the Lord God will give them light. Rev.22:5

My journal is changing as I’m learning and growing. My Bible is once again staying open on my living room couch so that I can drink of the living water through out my day. I feel like I cannot drink enough. And I love this feeling of thirst. Like God is close and I can touch him and feel him and know him and drink to overflowing. My shoes slip off my feet as my toes touch holy ground. My hands raise to feel the love of the Father rushing and flowing…

Deep calls to deep

In the roar of your waterfalls

All your waves and breakers

Have swept over me… Ps. 42:7

Last weeks Sunday School lesson on Proverbs 3 has been rolling through my mind. The verse I knew so well. One of the hundreds memorized. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths.

One day it stuck out. Acknowledge Him. Is that not what I have been doing as I fill my journal with lists of blessings? Looking at my life, the good, the bad, the painful, the scary, the beautiful, the glorious… and acknowledging Christ in each part?

23. baby calves that look like deer fawns

28. canned peaches filling shelves

33. fresh apples picked and eaten in fields

39. little boy smiles from the seat of a tractor

51. tiny barn boots lined up by the front door

59. my husband’s name on my caller ID

62. nights of no sleep/ for they remind me

of my weaknesses and my need for His strength

67. beautiful brides

69. twinkle lights in evening shadows

70. rainbows at weddings

82. soft rain that soaks the earth

83. community.

God in and around and through. I sing for joy at the work of your hands. Ps. 92:4

My mind fills with the stories from Sunday. The baby with three holes in her heart. The little girl with a blood disease. The husband with a possibility of prostrate cancer. The mother mourning her buried son. The wife facing another season of chemotherapy.

And then me. With all my own fears and hurts and sorrows. The fact that it was one year ago that I was pregnant. And in a month it will be one year since I miscarried.

Acknowledge Him. Even in pain. That God is the one who created the little girl with holes in her heart. God is the one who understands the complicated diagnoses of blood disease. It is God who has power over cancer and the outcome is His will. God who took that little boy home before he had really even lived. And it is God who knew that I would never carry that baby for more than a month. And He is okay with it. In fact, He has plans and purposes in it.

And my job is not to understand it (lean not on your own understanding) but to acknowledge Him in it.

To recognize that He is God. Not me. Never me. Never the idols that I create in life. Only Him. The one who says:

I have loved you with an everlasting love… Jer. 31:3

For I am the Lord…who takes hold of your right hand

And says to you, Do not fear, I will help you…Is. 41:13

For I will pour water on the thirsty… Is. 44:3

I long to redeem them…Hosea 7:13

Behold, I am making all things new…Rev. 21:5

Acknowledge that this world is just a moment. A breath. A blink. And pain may last for the night. But the living truth is that joy comes in the morning.