God at Work VI

I wasn't going to write today, but then something happened.  Something small, but crazy.

I'd been thinking I should read Psalm 46 today.

I've been reading in the Psalms, in the forties.  Yesterday morning I read Psalm 44 to Shawn before he went to work.  I got to the end, and we both sat in silence for a moment until he said, "Well.  That wasn't very encouraging."

So today I started to read Psalm 45, but I got distracted (this happens a lot).  Then I found myself showering (auto-pilot is a very strange thing), and under the streams of warm water, I thought about the way my world is rocking right now, the mountains quaking and falling into the sea, and I thought of Psalm 46, and I wanted to read it.

However, after getting dried and dressed, I got distracted again, and found myself checking emails and blog stats, not reading my Bible.  Meandering, I read yesterday's post and clicked on the link at the end of it.  Still meandering, I started reading old posts from my Seeking Wisdom, Craving Grace blog, and suddenly, there I was, staring at Psalm 46.  (Click that link there, if you want to see what I found.)

God is so good.  How can He be so good?  He led me to the scripture He wanted me to read, the exact scripture He had put on my heart, led me there through my own blogs (can you believe it?), by using my own lack of self-discipline and inability to avoid distraction.  God blessed me, even in my weakness and shortfalling.  I cannot grasp this.

In Prince Caspian, C.S. Lewis wrote about how the Pevensie children went back to Narnia after only a little time in our world, to find that hundreds of years had passed in Narnia.  As they walked around and tried to get their bearings, they figured out that they were at the ruins of the castle where they had ruled as kings and queens epochs ago.  One of their discoveries was an apple orchard, where they were able to eat and nourish themselves on fruit from mature trees.  It was while they were munching the apples that they began to connect the dots: they remembered planting the apple trees as saplings.  Of course, they had no idea at that time that one day they would be lost and starving, and they would find this fruit and be comforted, fed, and reorientated.

God has used things from my past to do this for me more than once.

Years ago, I had the blessing of teaching a Bible study in a large church.  There came a point when I had to step away from this ministry (the joy of my heart, it was so hard to leave).  The times that followed were tumultuous, and I experienced confusion, sadness and loneliness.  But then I happened to find a new Bible study in a different church, led by a woman who used to come to the Bible study I once taught.  A tremendously kind and humble person, she gave me much more credit than I deserved for guiding her to a place where she felt equipped to minister to others.  Her Bible study blessed me in ways I cannot explain.  It seemed that God took seeds I had tried to plant, and He grew them into something that could help and nourish me when I was in need.

I had the same feeling today as I read Psalm 46 on my long-neglected "other" blog.  God gave me words then that ministered to my heart today.

God is always at work.