practicing for the joy in transition


I'm listening to Christmas music while I write this morning, mindful of the pictures that the news has been rolling of the 10" of snow that fell in my home state. It's gonna be 72 here today. I'd like to trade.

I know I am in the minority. It's okay, when you play outside in the cold, you tend to be in the minority anyway. I guess we each have different tastes, or likes.

Our office and my family share a love for taking advantage of Sonic's Happy Hour, where you get two slushes or fountain drinks for the price of one. It's really two hours but it would just be stupid to call it 'Happy Two Hours.'

What Deanna and I like from there are not even close.

She always gets the same thing... cherry lime-aid.

I don't like it. I do like it at the state fair, but when I taste hers from Happy Hour, it always tastes like somebody just punched me in the mouth...yukky!

I'm not sure why I keep tasting hers. I do it I think because I am so confused about what there is to like. One time, I did it thinking it was mine. Wow! Big mistake!

It's not the bitterness of lime. I usually order lime in my water at restaraunts. I like that. I think it is just their recipe. It makes me pucker and shudder to think about.

I make a similar face when I order Pepsi or Coke at a drive through and they give me diet, instead! That assaults my senses as well. I wonder if they thought I was fat and needed a diet drink?

Anyway, I think one of the problems we have when we try to study the Word of God, is that we may not have liked how it "tasted" last time. Some of us approach every reading as if God has to hit us with a lightning bolt of revelation or we won't continue.

Sometimes study is like honey coating your throat on a cold day. Other times it's seems to be as dry as the Sahara.

We learn through both experiences, but one is sweet and the other tastes gritty and unsavory.

The key is we cannot get so addicted to 'sweet' that we lose our sense of direction or expectation when it isn't. God reveals Himself through most of the experiences we have in life and in the Word. We have to be listening and processing. Often the teaching is simple and we try to complicate it.

One of BJ's Bibles (that currently resides with my Mom) was marked up with writing in his own words of what ideas are being conveyed. I believe this helps us grow even through the bitter times. If we take the time to study and write brief notes, then when we return later we see something new and different.

This is one of the primary ways God moves and works within us. This is how He shows us that His Word is relevant and applicable to our lives today!

Keep returning for new sips, even if it is bitter at times. The next taste may surprise you!


dad