OK, so this morning, my devotion was on trials. (Thanks to Lisa for my book). It's been sort of a theme in the book for a month or so, and given the month I have had, oddly appropriate. I was thinking to myself after reading it that I was a little tired of having to be reminded of trials as a constant in my life. Like, really, really over it. I was just wishing I could start my morning with a warm fuzzy rather than a cold sandpapery, and I was really hoping that it wasn't setting me up for the day...
So, I get in the car to go to work, and the sunrise was AMAZING. I was thanking God and thinking about how beautiful it was, and it hit me that it wouldn't have been nearly as pretty without all the clouds. And then I got to thinking about clouds being a symbol of trouble and such, (shameless add; looking at them from both sides now) and I saw that the glory of the light shining through was so much more amplified by the "trouble" that attempted to drown it out. (And at this point you are thinking you are REALLY thankful you don't live in my head, and I can accept that). I kept staring at them all the way down the 15, and as I got closer to work, there were more and more clouds that were low, (Then I started singing old Temeculi-Temecula songs about "sunshine through the mist", and started to annoy myself so I stopped) Finally it just turned into fog that enveloped the immediate area and it hit me that those poor Tmec people didn't get to see the trouble or the glory at all, they were just stuck in the mire. The reality of the fact that I got to see something mere minutes earlier that they were robbed of made me sorta sad.
I really tried to find the good in the fog, but I couldn't. There wasn't anything helpful or beautiful about it, and while its cousin "cloud trouble" was losing its battle to shield the light above, the fog was doing a pretty good job of it. Was it trying to be a "trouble" too? It was entirely different. It was deadness, silence, nothingness. The absence of light and glory. Nothing about it was alive and vibrant. It just "was". Ick.
As the day went on, I realized that God wanted me to remember that there ARE all sorts of things that try to mask His glory and light. And depending on your perspective, sometimes it actually works. The fog was pretty adept at it. The clouds, not so much. They only served to show that if your perspective is right, you see Him MORE than you see the trouble, and the trouble actually makes Him more appealing.
I know that the clouds show up from time to time, and most of the time it seems for me, pretty cloudy, but it still has its glory mornings.
I believe that choosing not to live in the fog should be a priority. I feel like I have been given a brain and a spirit to help control over whether I live under the fog, or move out from under it. And there's where I find myself today. I am praying for God to tell me if I should be rising up and out so I can see His glory, or staying put and only hearing the story of the beautiful sunrise happening above. I believe it's better to be up where there's weather and things happening, than stuck in the mire of nothingness and oppression. I could miss it altogether if I am not quick to discern and apply.
I am not going to watch the weather report tonight. Tomorrow will bring what it brings. Apparently, my book is better at telling the weather than they are on channel 7.
