After the Storm

Their life shall be like a watered garden….For I will turn their mourning into joy and will comfort them and make them rejoice after their sorrow….My people will be satisfied with My goodness, says the Lord. Jeremiah 31:12-14 (Amplified Bible)

Today’s verse was not my experience yesterday but it is this morning. I have long ago given up the notion that in this life I will only have good days and always have a smile on my face. Some days are just plain hard and yet God wants me to know on other days I will be like a watered garden and will experience joy, comfort, and satisfaction. My individual trials and troubles are not the end of the story. They are simply difficult moments within a realm of many precious moments.

It has become my practice after I have walked through a particular valley to glean what treasures I can from that valley. I look for the lessons to be learned and truths to be embraced. I may not necessarily see them when the tears are falling and my heart is grieving, but afterwards, when the storm has passed, I am able to view things from a different perspective. God’s voice is usually clearer to me and my heart is usually more receptive to what He has to say. Sometimes the lesson entails seeing an aspect about myself that wasn’t evident to me at the time. Skewed thinking, misplaced expectations, impaired vision, and wrong focus can become huge boulders in my path that must be recognized and removed.

This morning’s meditation over yesterday’s difficulties brought much to light. When people become my source for significance, identity, value, purpose, and worth I am standing on shaky ground. Mainly because God is the only true Source for those things. Besides, people come and go in my life. Putting such high expectations on temporary relationships sets me up for a continual sense of being unsettled and unstable. Jesus alone is my Rock and sturdy foundation. Because He does not change, what I derive from relationship with Him does not change.

The satisfaction God offers me is often disrupted because of discontentment. Wanting something I don’t have. Wanting life to be the way it use to be in certain areas. Thinking that because things have changed I will now be missing out. Once again, I have to see Who my source for life really is. If it is tied up in relationship with certain people I will definitely live with a sense of unhappiness, incompleteness, and emptiness. But when my relationship with God is the central point of my life I am able to be that well watered garden full of joy, comfort, and satisfaction. It is not a pie-in-the-sky thought. It is real life!

Father, any time I see You as my Source for all things I am able to experience the abundant life You promised. Keep that truth alive in me. Amen.