May 19

“Love can never be glad of anything that hurts its loved ones unless there is to come out of the hurt some infinitely greater blessing.  Therefore we may be sure, no matter how unlikely it may seem, that hidden in every one of our sorrows is a blessing that would be a most grievous loss for us to miss.”  Hannah Whitall Smith, Daily Secrets, 5/19

I need to hear this today.  I’ve suffered a hurt and I might be tempted to commit the same grievous error that Martha did when her brother, Lazarus, died when she declared that her brother wouldn’t have died if Jesus had been there.  While it would seem she was acknowledging that Jesus had the power to save her brother what she was really saying, whether she understood it or not, was that her brother’s dying wasn’t in God’s plan.  This was a crack in her reservoir of trust.  How quickly we can look to surface matters--the place of our feelings--as an indication of whether or not things are going the way we’ve deemed they should.  So now I’m stuck on the surface in all the goo of feelings concerning my hurt, even though I’ve acknowledged that God is in control and He will bring good out of all this.  Lord, all I can do right now is to rest in Your Love and to trust that eventually the goo will let go and my bad feelings will evaporate, if I will continually praise You and all that You are doing in my life.

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.....but Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.....Noah walked with God.”  Genesis 6:5, 6, 8, 9b