February 2

“The ‘nevertheless I live’ rings glad bells in your heart, however, if you have begun to experience His life within you.  You know now that He did come to bring abundant life, not to squelch you.  As you watch Him untangle you and those around you, you know this in a way I could never express.”  Eugenia Price, S.P.S., 2/2

By the time I read this quote this morning I was ready to receive it.  I’d started the morning by reading some verses on suffering.  I wrote about how I was suffering because of slipping back into feeling sorry for myself and how I desired to draw upon God.  It became abundantly clear that my wants pale in comparison to what God wants to give me.  The way God showed me this was not with my own situation but with another’s.  This person I thought of was basing their whole happiness on another’s ability to give them what they wanted.  I then realized that even if that other person was able to fulfill my friend’s love needs, my friend would still end up bereft if that other person were to die.  I then could see my own situation in that light and realized I did not desire that for myself at all, yet this is what I was mourning.  Instead, I shall mourn for this person and their misplaced wants--reminding myself only Christ can fulfill my true need. I am feeling a little more untangled!  This is, indeed, the abundant life.

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?......No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”  Romans 8:35,37