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The Goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living


 I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.  Wait for the LORD! be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD  (psalm 27:13-14)

          When you are in pain, whether physical or otherwise, your whole world tends to spin down into that pool of misery. Years ago, I discovered verse 13 when I was wallowing in some sort of emotional pain. I remember walking somewhere repeating "I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." While I didn't take verse 14 with me on my gerbil wheel, by spending time on verse 13, I was doing verse 14 - not well, perhaps, but as well as I could.
          Waiting isn't easy. It's easier when you have something with which to distract yourself. The problem with having distractions, however, is that you might miss the goodness of the Lord.  It's during that waiting time that our hunger for Him grows if we don't snack on lesser goods. It is in forsaking the less that we find the best and the true. 
          Right now, it seems as if I can do nothing else but wait. Waiting requires, and builds, strength and heart(character). I had hoped to spend the day reading and writing, but my body has insisted otherwise. Today, the best I can really say is that tomorrow will be another day and perhaps that will be the day that I see the goodness of God in the land of the living because I will finally be free of the distractions that cause me to miss it before.
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On the Calendar:
Lusitania Day
Birthday of
Johannes Brahms
Robert Browning
Rabindranath Tagore
Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky

 

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