Looking Up

I am not a writer but I can talk... a lot!! So I have come to the conclusion that typing is just the words coming out my fingers instead of my mouth. Both stay pretty busy so I think I will give my mouth a rest!! :)

I woke up not feeling sick Wednesday morning which was new. So I decided to go for a walk. I took my dog Fendi with me and we walked about 1 mile. Don't laugh, that is a big deal considering I haven't walked 10ft without getting sick to my stomach for months now! After the first 1/2 mile I stopped by a pond by my house, sat on a hill and listened to the fountain and my worship music. The day was so nice. The air was not hot, but not cold, and the sun was shining and there was no cloud to be seen. These are the days when it is hard to not worship God just for the beauty He created. Just seeing it and experiencing it makes me have to audibly say, "Praise you Lord for who you are." After my brief rest on the hill I started the trip back home. I forgot that the trip back was going to be worse. That is the up hill part the WHOLE way! Truly. I was listening to the Desperation band and this song came on. It is called "Pleasing to You". The first lines say "Sanctify me, clean out my closet, take away anything that is not pleasing to you." So, I am walking... I have all of these thoughts swirling in my head about life, finances, living, loving and things that I can not remotely wrap my thougths around. I am walking uphill thinking of every hard thing going on. I am looking at the hill I am trying to walk up and I am realizing how incredibly hard it is. I mean really, my 15 pound dog with legs the size of hot dogs was walking faster than me!! I stopped. I looked up. I see the completely cloudless sky, except for one small cloud that in the vastness of the clear blue sky looked like a wisp of hair. On this beautiful PURE day I was basically focusing on this one little cloud that is my reality, my fact. But I had the sudden urge to "clean out my closet." It is almost like God created this perfect lovely day and I was not clean enough to partake of it's beauty. I had to ask for forgiveness right then for everything that I thought may remotely resemble sin in my life. I felt the urgency to become "pleasing to Him." After I took that moment I looked back up in the sky and the little cloud was gone. Now I don't think that God put the cloud in the sky and then took it away but I think God let me see something in the natural movement of the sky. How can I see the good things in my life if I am focusing on my issues. How can I see, and appreciate, the beauty of God's creation if all I see is the one little cloud that is meaningless in the greatness of the clear blue sky. If I worry about that one little cloud I miss what God is trying to show me. His majesty, His power, His love, His creativity... and so much more.
I am in a bible study right now and our leader made a point on Thursday evening that qualified what I was thinking about on Wednesday. She said that if we are looking around us "my hill, my troubles, my life" then all we can see is the problem. I can't see past what I am looking at. Have you ever been focusing on something so hard while you are walking that you run right into something that you didn't see?! It's like that. If we focus on our problems we are going to fall, stumble, or run into something we weren't expecting. If we look up, on the other hand, look to God, we see His Glory. We see the possibilities that God has layed out. We see hope and promise and truth! Jenny, our leader, also said one time there is a difference between fact and truth. Fact is reality but truth is greater than that. Truth is the promises of God. For example, the fact is I have a cyst on my ovary that hurts. It can't be denied, you can see it. BUT, the truth is my God is bigger than my circumstance or my problem and Jesus died so I could be made whole in health. Looking at the fact can become depessing and overwhelming. Looking at the Truth that God has provided brings hope and an expectation for great things. I am expecting great things from God. So I will look up even when what I see in front of me seems bigger.