AWOL

Full Moon Thoughts

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

Tonight was a full moon. Apparently, that’s when the crazies come out. Or maybe that’s when people’s tendencies to act crazy go into full gear. Or so I’ve heard.

For me, it was very calming to see the full moon in the night sky. I suppose it’s because I know I’m looking at the same moon that was up in the sky when I was little.

So much in this life is transitory. So many people I thought would be around for a long time have gone AWOL. So many loved ones aren’t here at all anymore.

Even the places I love don’t stay around, i.e. Borders and all those record stores in the malls.

But seeing that moon in the sky tonight reminded me that God is my constant. He’s the one that stays the same while everything else around me changes, while I myself am changing.

That’s the thing I’ve learned. Even if I could go back to a happy place in my childhood and find it’s still the same, it’s not the same because I’m different. I’m not the same as I was as an 8-year old. Hopefully, no one as an adult is exactly like he or she was as an 8-year old.

It’s comforting to know that God will always be the same. He will always love me the same (perfectly and unconditionally), He will always think of me the same (as His beloved), and He will always treat me the same (working all things together for my good and giving me only the very best).

For a while, clouds obscured the moon, but after a while they drifted away. Sometimes, God gets obscured by those pressing anxieties in my life. It gets difficult to find Him when there’s so many things clamoring for my attention.

The good news is that after the anxieties subside and those things move on, God remains.

Two Words

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / 1 Comment

“Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there’s pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name” (Matt Redman)

Two words: give thanks.

Give thanks even when you don’t feel like it. Give thanks as a defiant cry against desperate circumstances, in spite of the odds and the naysayers and the dark clouds on your horizon.

Give thanks like empty-handed Job, who in the face of his own wife telling him to curse God and die, with painful boils all over his body, made the declaration: The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

Give thanks when the checks bounce, when the bills are past due, when the rent money is AWOL, when it would be so much easier to throw in the proverbial towel and just give up.

Give thanks when there are no job prospects in sight and when you feel defeated and your life seems to have hit a dead-end. Give thanks even when your dreams and hopes are on life-support.

Give thanks if for no other reason that God is worthy of it. Period. Even if those fig trees are barren and the grapevines have no grapes and the olive trees yield no olives. Give thanks because God is always good and you are always loved.

Just give thanks.

Alone But Not Lonely

/ Ragamuffingospelfan / Leave a comment

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I was literally sitting in the dark on the upstairs patio at Frothy Monkey. One friend has been AWOL from my life for a while now, another moved to Cookeville today, and yet another was instagramming about how much fun she was having with friends listening to music at Franklin Mercantile just down the street.

And I sat alone in the dark.

And I was okay with it.

Sometimes, it’s good to be alone. In fact, it’s more than good. It’s necessary. You can never really effectively be present in a crowd if you can never be alone. You only hear your true name and your true identity in those times of aloneness.

It took me embracing those times of being alone to hear that I am my Abba’s beloved and to know that I belong to Him and He is very pleased with me.

I tried to message my friend to find out if she was still in the area and got no response. So I walked over to the Franklin Mercantile only to find I had missed everything. The crowd, including my friend, was gone.

I was still okay.

That used to be a recurring nightmare of mine. I’d find my friends had all left me suddenly or that I was just a step or a second too slow and would just miss them.

But tonight, I knew I wasn’t alone. Those Strong Arms that hold me up in the day and in the crowded places are just as able to carry me through the dark places where I am alone.

You can only hear your Abba singing over you when you’re alone. You can never truly appreciate God as a refuge and stronghold and place of rest in a crowd, but in those times when no one else is around.

I pray you can embrace being alone as much as you cherish being with family and friends. May you learn to love the dark, for that is where your Father will whisper precious promises to you that you will come to cherish more dearly than anything you can find at any other time.