BIRTHDAY!

It’s been about a year. As I prepared to depart for places beyond the Atlantic this time last year, the aBeLOG was launched as a tool to apprise well-wishers of my goings-on, whereabouts, and antics. I must confess I have enjoyed finding my cyberspace “voice” over the ensuing months of blogging, the pressure of filing a post weekly, the attempt to be a creative chronicler.

And barely is one week’s item docked, when next Sunday rolls up, without fanfare, warning, or excuse. Sundays just keep on a-comin'!

So, perhaps the best lesson I’ve learnt from twelve months in the blogosphere has been the one about keeping my eyes and ears open to God and His activities and presence all around me, in my life, with my work, on my travels …. To remember what God has done, to remember to attend to what God is doing, and to remember that God will continue to do.

Always working, He is, indeed, even when our bodies are frail, our limbs fatigued, our feelings frayed, our minds frazzled. He still works … in and through it all.

He who keeps you
will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel
Will neither slumber nor sleep.
Psalm 121:3–4

In fact, the gracious God that He is, this unsleeping one, is even “en-gracing” us while we slumber. Therefore, the psalmist admonishes us, “Relax!”

It is vain for you
to rise up early,
To retire late,
To eat the bread
of painful labors;
For He gives
to His beloved
even in his sleep.
Psalm 127:2

This is a God who constantly cares for each of His children, lavishing the length and breadth and height and depth of His magnificent love upon us in Christ Jesus, from which love nothing—NOTHING!—can separate us. And, if we keep our senses attuned to God and His love, we can see His fingerprints in our lives—moments of His grace, mementos of His mercy, motions of His power, mentions of His peace. We can catch glimpses of the very image of God in our fellow humans, the mind of Christ in our fellow believers, and the fruit of the Spirit in our fellow pilgrims walking with us on this journey called life. And most clearly of all, in the Word, the inscripturated text of the Bible, we discover the Way of salvation, the absolute Truth, and the true Life we can be a part of.

And I am learning to watch for these. From the despair of leaving all, to the delights of finding new friends in Christ. From the disasters of missed flights, to depth of God’s love shown to me from unexpected quarters. From the discouragements of life in foreign lands, to the dazzling glimpses of God’s grace in and through difficulties. I am learning to watch. I am beginning to see. I am teaching myself to share. And you know what? All of this helps me trust when I can’t follow what He’s doing, can’t fathom why He’s doing, can’t feel when He’s doing!

So let’s continue to look for Him all around ourselves. Rumors of the immortal. Radiance of the invisible. Revelation of the God only wise.

For since the creation of the world
His invisible attributes,
His eternal power,
and divine nature,
have been clearly seen ….
Romans 1:20

Great Father of glory;
Pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore thee,
All veiling their sight;
All laud we would render;
O help us to see
’Tis only the splendor
Of light hideth thee!
Walter C. Smith, 1876