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What We Haven't Seen

             Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” (Lamentations 3:22-24)

 

            Today is being a great illustration of the new year. I got up this morning with plans to do this, that, and the other, including grocery shopping, laundry, and lots of housecleaning, crafting, and writing. The shopping is done. I’ve done a little housecleaning. I hung the laundry out…and it’s raining. Not hard, but enough to make the clothes wetter than they were before it rained. And the crafting? I’ve almost finished the part I tore out right before bed last night.

          We generally begin the lie of “the new year” with one or two excesses. We either over-indulge or we over-expect, building our plans around a reality that doesn’t cooperate. And at the end of day one, or day three, or day seventeen, when the dreams haven’t come true, we give up. We may even tell ourselves that God doesn’t love us. If He loved us, wouldn’t He fix things? Make them all better. Whatever condition our condition is in proves that somehow, we must have done something bad.

          But today’s passage says – figuratively at least – that even if we got on God’s last never last night or last year, none of that matters today. He’s back to full capacity. But sometimes, the progress we want to make takes longer than we think it should.

          This past week has been an example – a recurrent example. When I came to Florida last October, my little gardens were weedy and dismal. November came along. Then December. And over Christmas, we had a cold snap, so I covered my vegetables and herbs. When I took the covers off, I was surprised at how good the garden looks. It really wasn’t any better off than it was before I covered it; it’s just that I saw it every day. When I had to wait for four days before seeing it again, I saw it for what it was, not for what it wasn’t. In three months, I’ll be tearing it all out and returning north to what may be weedy or empty ground. The waiting will begin again.

           It sometimes takes waiting when we not only don’t see progress but we don’t see anything to discover what we haven’t seen. 

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