Moving Along Slowly

A day behind....I read yesterday's reading of "Streams in the Desert" by L.B. Cowman. I chuckled....because in years past, I have delved into the New Year with a flurry of goal setting, and lists of new resolutions, and game plans for success.

This year has been different. I have struggled a little this year...I realized over and over where I fall so terribly short. All of my best laid plans often fall as rubble around my feet. All my best inspirations become soapboxes that somehow hurt and intimidate rather than inspire.

No....this year, as much as I want to lay out all my fitness goals, my health goals, my relationship goals, my home school goals, my spiritual goals.....etc etc....I am painfully aware today that I am not the commander of my own journey. Personal development gurus would argue differently, but my life experience has shown that "I am not my own" and my journey is not my own. I am most definitely on a path, and a long and wonderfully arduous journey...to the "High Places" but it is not of my own making.

As I realized I was a day behind in "Streams in the Desert", the quiet whisper of my Father spoke to my heart saying, "My sweet child, you are not behind, you are right where you should be." He looks down as a loving parent, takes my small trembling hand...and says to me,"I will move along slowly...since you have never been this way before." (Joshua 3:4)

And so it is with humility in my own journey that I offer in it's entirety the entry for January 3, taken directly from "Streams in the Desert" in hopes that just in case you are like me, and you simply cannot muster up exciting goals and plans for the coming year....knowing that you are powerless to achieve them on your own....I offer this gentle reminder that you are "just where you should be"....and we are all being led on this journey...by a loving and patient Father...who knows that we are but dust.

January 3

I (will) move along slowly at the pace of the droves before me and that of the children.

(Genesis 33:14)

What a beautiful picture of Jacob's thoughtfulness for the cattle and the children! He would not allow them to be driven too hard for even one day. He would not lead them at a pace equal to what a strong man like Esau could keep or expected them to keep, but only one as fast as they were able to endure. He knew exactly how far they could go in a a day, and he made that his only consideration in planning their travel. He had taken the same wilderness journey years before and knew from personal experience its roughness, heat and distance. And so he said, "I (will) move along slowly." "Since you have never been this way before" (Josh.3:4)

We "have never been this way before," but the Lord Jesus has. It is all untraveled and unknown ground to us, but He knows it all through personal experience. He knows the steep places that take our breath away, the rocky paths that make our feet ache, the hot and shadeless stretches that bring us to exhaustion, and the rushing rivers that we have to cross - Jesus has gone through it all before us. As John 4:6 shows, "Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down." He was battered by every possible torrent, but all the flood waters coming against Him never quenched His love. Jesus was made a perfect leader by the things he suffered. He knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust"(Psalm 103:14). Think of that when you are tempted to question the gentleness of His leading. He remembers all the time and will never make you take even one step beyond what your feet are able to endure. Never mind if you think you are unable to take another step, for either He will strengthen you to make you able, or He will call a sudden halt, and you will not have to take it at all. Frances Ridley Havergal

In "pastures green"? Not always; sometimes He

Who knowest best, in kindness leadeth me

In weary ways, where heavy shadows be.

So,whether on the hilltops high and fair

I dwell, or in the sunless valleys, where

The shadows lie, what matter? He is there

Barry