I’ve been feeling kinda low since we’ve been back. Partly due to the strain of the last several weeks, partly due to the exhaustion of travel, partly due to John heading off to Jinja for the week and me coming back to Arua to settle the children back home alone.
But it’s also a bit because I haven’t really had time to process my father-in-law’s death very much since things were so busy in the UK with preparations for the funeral and such.
One of the things that bothered me the most was the timing of Sam’s death. We asked ourselves, Why couldn’t God have given him just 24 more hours? Then we would have made it home and seen him alive one last time. We were so close, and yet we were too late. At least that’s the way we saw it.
In the end we just accepted that God’s timing is perfect and we just have to believe He had very good reasons for taking Sam when He did. But it still stung.
This morning I was working in my Beth Moore Bible Study book called Living Beyond Yourself, and the topic this week is the character of the fruit of the Spirit… Faithfulness.
Beth challenged me by asking, Do you base your faith on what God does or who He is?
If my faith is based on what God does, then I can easily start to question God if something happens that doesn’t seem right to me. Does what looks wrong in my eyes mean God is any less faithful? Of course not. But it’s easy to question the rationale, which is the same as questioning God.
And yet a faith based on God doing what is right in my eyes is no faith at all, because faith is not conditional according to things working out the way I want them to. Faith is being sure of what I hope for, and certain of what I do not see. (Heb.11:1) And that means believing that God exists and rewards those who earnestly seek Him. (Heb.11:6)
That kind of faith pleases God, and that’s what I want…to be known as one who walked with God, like Enoch…he so enraptured God with his faith, that God raptured him and didn’t even leave a body to bury. I bet some people questioned THAT death.
My faith was seriously shaken when my mom died of cancer when I was 15 years old. For 13 years I blamed God for her death, and turned my back on Him. But God, in His faithfulness, pursued me until I finally came back to Him.
I don’t ever want to live without Him again, no matter the circumstances I’m facing. Whether I agree with His ways or not, they will always remain higher than mine, and so I will struggle to trust Him anyway, because He IS faithful.
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