Look Up

I want to share with you all  the devotion that I read this morning, January 24^th, from Sarah Young’s Jesus Calling.  If you’ve ever wanted a daily devotional, I would highly recommend it, as it's not heady or weighty.   It was given to me for Christmas by a dear a friend and it’s literally like starting each and every day with a bear hug from the one that made you. 

                “MY PEACE is the treasure of treasures: the pearl of great price.  It is an exquisitely costly gift, both for the Giver and the receiver.  I purchased this  Peace for you with my blood.  You receive this gift by trusting Me in the midst of life’s storms.  If you have the world’s peace—everything going your way—you don’t seek MY unfathomable Peace.  Thank Me when things do not go your way, because spiritual blessings come wrapped in trials.  Adverse circumstances are normal in a fallen world.  Expect them each day.  Rejoice in the face of hardship, for I have overcome the world.”

In my last post, I wrote about how much I cherish my Mondays.  How sometimes I feel as though I live for Mondays.  This Monday is no different, and after a week of running to and fro, all over the planet it seemed, I awoke this morning with no place to be and nothing to do.  Hallelujah.

As I turned to today’s page and saw that the first two words were “MY PEACE”, it felt like that big old bear hug from Jesus that I have been longing for this week.  But as I read, thanking Him in my head for answering my prayers for the quiet and peaceful day that is stretched out before me, I was reminded of a conversation I recently had with my Aunt.

As we prepared our holiday plans, we were trying how to fit together the pieces of a broken family.  We were both longing for the days when once it seemed, everyone happily and willingly showed up to my grandmother’s each and every holiday,  to enjoy the feast and the fellowship.  With that no longer as easy as it once was, she said, “Lindsey, I so wish this could just be easy and not so hard.”  In one of those divine moments of inspiration, I retorted, “but then we would never have to look up.”

I can honestly say now that I’m grateful for the hardships in my life that force me to just stop and say, “You’re in control of this, not me”.  Moreover, I’m beyond grateful, that there is someone up above to look up to, when life throws a few lemons in my direction. But most of all, I'm always, always touched by the peace that overwhelms me when I mutter those words.