Even so

Yesterday I couldn't do this but today I can.  Sometimes I think my grief over Donna moving to Germany is like being poisoned.  Each dose of the antidote helps me to recover, but I have to vomit it out to really get better. Yesterday was the worst of it, I know I will continue to have bouts, but at least today, I haven't cried about it even once.  A vast improvement really.

I really didn't want to go to church yesterday, I even toyed with the idea of telling Les I didn't feel like going knowing full well he would be totally on board and ready to skip it.  But the very fact that I seriously didn't want to go tipped me off that I really NEEDED to go.  It's always the way it works for me, the times I really don't want to, God has something important for me to hear that day in service.  This time was no different than the others.  Phil did a Thanksgiving sermon emphasizing the thanks, the gratitude that we should have towards God.  Even when we don't feel like it, even when we are at a point in life that there seems to be nothing to be grateful about. Even when we are the valley of the shadow of death (okay, that was just for dramatic effect-though true).  But you understand what I a driving at. Basically when we cannot find any redeeming value in the circumstances we find ourselves in "Even so, Father, it seemed good in Your sight." Luke 10:21  Meaning, we may not understand how this trial could ever possibly seem good not now, not ever.  God can.  God has the benefit of seeing time with a better vantage point than we do.  He can see the benefit of our experiences for the future understanding that the pain and anguish we feel now, will temper over time and allow us to see things differently, if not clearly, after it has all passed.

He said that being thankful during good times is easy.  The hard part is to be thankful during hard times and even to be thankful for the trials themselves.  That this time is a time of going through the Refiner's fire.  That in order to make us pure, we need to be heated up to melting (trials) so that the Refiner can scoop the impurities off the top and make us more pure.  I knew this already, I learned this when I was a baby Christian.  Somehow I either forgot it or was simply too blinded by my situation to remember it.  It has been a long time since I have had such a trial that it has brought me to my knees crying out "Abba, Father!".

That in itself is a blessing, that my life has been so good for so long.  Or that I have been so lax in my relationship with God that I wasn't walking closely enough with Him.  Either way the end result is I have now entered the fire and Lord knows, I'm starting to melt.

Even so, Father, it seems good in Your sight.