I’m branching out

This morning I received some bad news. The instant pain I felt shooting its dart through the centre of my heart left me paralyzed for a brief moment. I wondered what I have done to receive such bad news when right now everything seems to be going well for me.

As I now reflect on the impact that this will have on my mortal life, it suddenly dawns on me. Your ways are clearly not my ways and your thoughts elevated high above my human comprehension. I realize now that life is not simply about the good, the majestic, the moments when you feel like you are walking on centre stage and having everyone applauding your achievements. Life is also about the negative, the unexpected bad news, the heartache of a failed friendship or a crumbling marriage. Often when life decides to hit you foursquare between the eyes and you stagger into a corner where you feel like camping out and never making a comeback, it is then that something profound happens. It is in those awkward and often scary moments when you stretch me beyond my own abilities. Those moments when I feel so vulnerable and alone are the moments when you allow one area to die so that it makes room for a new blossom to appear. When one door closes you already have your hand on another keeping it ajar for me to enter.

I understand now that in as much as the news of today will leave me mourning my loss for a while, I understand now that it is your gentle way to remind me that the time has come for me to branch out. I have to laugh now at myself for I have often misread you. I thought you were uninvolved in my complexities, when all along you have waited for me to take hold of the title deed to a new area in my life which I have not explored yet. My laughter now is growing louder because I now understand why I will experience hurt and pain. It is because my life is making room for greater, much loftier things to happen.

I am at peace, I am renewed, I am tracing your footsteps, I am listening to the echoes in your voice to take me to another, yet more fantastic place.

Walking with You

My desire is to walk with you. It matters very little if I do not find myself in the company of those who compare notes on their achievements, the luster of their gold, the very essence of their being captured in what they have accumulated over time. My desire is to walk with you. I say this to my heart and to my mind which often does not work in tandem with each other. Walking with you is learning from you. Learning from you enables me to be a better me. A better me is a spouse more extraordinaire, a parent more focused on my calling and a neighbor who is simply more understanding and giving. An understanding me is much more tolerant with others who usually irritate me. The more giving part of me is an oasis that others find joy in refreshing themselves when tempest are raging in their lives. I have this desire simply to walk with you. Often so much is made of a self-made individual after they have passed. I honestly do not want to be remembered as someone who was self-made. I want to be known as someone who walked with you, for when I laughed, echoes of your holy laughter could be heard rumbling through me. When I cry, I want your heart to be heard through my tears, your touch to be felt through my embrace and your faithfulness to be experienced through my loyalty. My desire is merely to walk with you. I want to be walking with you, living near you, finding rest in your shade, nourishing on your words, being protected under your gaze and growing in the reprimand of your voice. I feel so in love with you, I live only for you. Do you understand just how much you have changed my life since I’ve started walking with you? My heart beats faster, my life feels more complete, my joy anything but obsolete. I am telling you, I desire to continue walking with you.

Giving Him the highest praise

Friends

This morning as I made my way into work, I reflected on the exciting things happening in my life. My natural response was to burst into exuberant thanksgiving to God for all that He has done in my life and that of my family. It felt strange, but although I was driving I could feel myself stretching, like someone standing on his toes, to give God the highest praise.

I know, we often use these words so easily. We say that we want to give God the highest praise. It's however easier said than done. We live in a society where we mourn the loss of celebrities and people alike, we have often never had the privilege of meeting. We buy their music and listen to it as we celebrate the memory of the great things they have achieved. Yet, we are a society who often forget that irrespective of our academic success or corporate status, we are so dependant on the One who sustains the very nature of our being.

Today I stretch myself, I stretch myself to stand on my toes and bring honour to our Father. I acknowledge that in Him and through Him all things living exist by His grace alone. I stretch myself as I reflect on how blessed and healthy and prosperous my family is. Just hearing the laughter of my children and seeing the gentle grin on my wife's face certainly gives me enough reason to stand in my heart and to stretch myself in honour of the One who is my everything.

The Lord bless you.

Simply His servant

Rodrique E. George