Tag: Red Sea

Moving On

On By femmefuelIn FemmeBytes by Sasha Katz, October 2011 (Devotions)Leave a comment

By AbbyA

Stuff comes a knockin’  all day long.  I’d like to characterize much of it as static.  But that is not the case.  It is stuff that . . . Chips at the heart of who I am.  Who I work very hard to be.  The who in me that tries her best to be just like Him.

Someone said to me just the other day – – in the same sentence where she described her loss – – that she needed to move on.  That comment has stuck with me all week.  There is such a fine line between what has happened to us and where God wants us to go from there.  There is so much evidence of God dividing our past from His remembrance.  So much evidence of Him sending apart East and West.  So much burying at the bottom of His Sea.

At the same time, we are defined by the floods that floor us.  The quakes that shake us.  The roaring winds that bring us to our knees.  At least it feels that way.  We are defined by loss and suffering and death.  Our own mistakes.  Intentional sin.  We all, at times, have heavy tears and even Scarlett Letters.

My friend’s need to move on statement has stuck with me.  I recall saying something similar about myself some time ago.  I remember thinking, Lord, I just need to move on from holding accountable or even holding against my disappointments towards a particular person that I love.  I remember wanting to move on so badly.  Really grappling with why I could not just move on.  Wanting to be like Him – divide, send apart, bury.

But, really, what I learned more than a year later, is that He is the Divider and the Burier.  I can’t do the Majestic and Supernatural.  I can’t be crushed by a wave and then separate my own injuries and pain from who I am.  He is the Interceder.  He is the Time Keeper.  His depth surpasses even eternity.  He knows my injuries and pain.  He is the one who allows floods, and waves and quakes.

But He is also the one who piles up sand bags around my heart to stop the bleeding.  He is the one who does not stand afar.  He is the one who catches tears in jars.  Allows me to wipe my tears off His feet with my hair.  He is the one who marks spiritual time and measures how far I have come from my injuries.  He is the Healer who knows when it is time to divide the Red Sea and put Egypt behind me.

I don’t know about when to move on.  I just know that, without notice, it happens one day.  Without the knowledge that He has divided and buried.  Without the knowledge that the sand bags have been replaced by spiritual strength built into your foundation.  Without full knowledge of what He has done, you wake up to His Glory.  And, according to Him, that is new every morning.  Lamentations 3:22

I have become a wonder to many, But you are my strong refuge.  Let my mouth be filled with Your praise.  And with your glory all the day.  Psalm 71:7.

Embracing Difficult Days

On By femmefuelIn FemmeBytes by Bindu Adai-Mathew, October 2011 (Devotions)Leave a comment

By Bindu Adai-Mathew

Challenge yourself to embrace both difficult and picture perfect days.  AbbyA

Embracing picture perfect days is easy, but are you, kidding me, AbbyA? Embrace difficult days, too? Surely you mean accept difficult days, right?  After all, who of us wants to embrace those dreary, overcast, “when is my life going to get better” days that we all have to endure? Have you not seen the economy or the job market? Embrace? Really?

Really. For AbbyA hasn’t just given us a challenge with those words. She has given us an invitation. She is inviting us to experience God at His greatest…when we are at our weakest. When He is our true sufficiency when we are at our most insufficient. When He is the only thing we can rely on, that is when we truly experience God.

I am convinced that the Children of Israel had the desert experience not as a punishment, but it was an invitation to have the most intimate experience with their maker. During their desert experience, God provided them with manna for food, but every time they tried to hoard it for the next day, it became filled with maggots. God was inviting them to experience His Sufficiency. He was trying to tell them to trust that He would provide them with their morning manna every day. Trust that he would continue doing what He promised.  He didn’t want them focused on the manna…He wanted them focused on Him.  Because He would take care of all their needs.

Yes, my friend…embrace your difficult days…It may be during those days, where like Children of Israel, you have the chance to be fed by His Manna by day and warmed by His Fire at night.  Let those difficult days be the days where God reveals His true power to you. Where you experience the “Peace that Passes All Understanding” despite your circumstances. Where you experience His Power over the most hardest of hearts. Where He opens up the impossible doors of your life like the Red Sea so you can walk through them. Those difficult, stormy days that you are hating and wishing would just pass may end up being the most defining days of your Christian walk. Because it is there, through the haze and fog of the storm, where you will see and experience the Presence of your Maker.