Write It On A Rock

Happy Thanksgiving!  No matter what today looks like for you, I hope you get some time in to just sit and thank God for who He is and the many undeserved gifts He gives us.

My brother and sister in-law are here from Kansas City last and my sister and her family are coming tomorrow from Wisconsin.  I will be making cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, spoon bread, and squash.  These sweet potatoes are a favorite thanksgiving recipe of mine, but this year my mom requested squash, so squash it is.

The day after thanksgiving we are putting up our Christmas tree and that is like another holiday in itself. We blast the Christmas music, and deck out the house.  Our kids love to help bring the decorations up from the basement.  Then I make a bunch of appetizers for our family that night and we stay home to enjoy each other in our newly decorated house.  It is a treat every year to watch the excitement in our children’s faces throughout the Christmas season.

I am studying Genesis right now.  Last week we studied Genesis 10 and 11, the story of the tower of Babel and the genealogy of Noah’s sons.

To be honest I was bored as I read the genealogy, not sure what I could take out of it, and I all too often move through familiar Bible stories, missing lessons I could be learning because of its familiarity.

Yet as I sat in our sun room this morning reading my Bible study notes on this genealogy I was struck, once again, by the fact that I am a part of God’s Story.  I know the end, I know that my time on this earth is brief and yet God cares about each and every one of us.

He knows our names, what we looked like in our mother’s womb, how many years we will live and every intricacy of our lives in between.

Every day I struggle over decisions, small and large.  I fret over mishaps of my day and I often care too much about how I appear to others.  

Yet when I read a genealogy it all seems so clear.  This is God’s story and not my own.  I get WAY too stressed over small matters…  Someone used the last of the milk I needed for the dinner I am supposed to make in 10 minutes.  Or my kids just messed up the floor I just cleaned, and something is added to my “to do” list that I didn’t plan.

I am working on this.  I catch myself, stop and pray, thank God or just acknowledge He is with me when I find myself getting stressed.  My blood pressure is rising just thinking about how I overly react to my circumstances on a daily basis.

Why do I fret?  Maybe it’s because I think that this world should revolve around me.  Maybe it is because I don’t trust God that He has a greater purpose for everything, even the small difficulties of our day.

Yesterday I was having a hard time making a few small decisions that had snowball effects on me and others.  I immediately recognized my temptation to stress about it.  I prayed that God would make the right decision clear to me, recognized that God is in control, I calmly waited a few minutes and went with a decision.  It felt so good, and looking back my way would not have turned out well anyway.

1 Peter 5:7 says “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.”  I love that even though our lives are such a tiny part of God’s bigger story, God cares for US.  He cares for YOU.  He doesn’t want us to worry, He wants us to give Him every concern we have.

I told Micah and Hudson this week separately “you are a part of God’s big story.  God has given you gifts and talents like no one else and He has a plan for your life.”  (And I may have added something about how we know the end of the story where God kicks Satan’s butt and evil loses, because without a battle they don’t seem too interested in what I have to say).

As a side note, I am reading the book “The Blessing” which is about the importance of giving our children a blessing using words (written or spoken) along with physical touch.  It’s a great book for parents.

You are a part of God’s great story.  It is so easy to get sidetracked in life, forgetting that what matters most is trusting in Christ and living for His glory instead of our own glory.   No matter what circumstance you are in right now know that our lives are about a greater purpose of God’s big story.  Even though His story is big and we are such a small part of that, He tells us in His Word that “He cares for You.”

I pray that we all can be all about doing Jesus’ will and asking Him to use our lives.  Because in the end when we are no longer here, when we are a name in a genealogy, living for God’s purpose is the only thing that will really matter.