Faith

When there is so much uncertainty in life, how do you know how to step out in Faith? Which way to step? Sometimes it feels like all the balls are in the air, nothing is in your hands. Truthfully, it's always that way, but sometimes the Lord lets you feel it more acutely. And when a new year starts that way, you have to wonder where you will end up in 365 more days. That's where I am. Standing in the doorway of 2011, wondering. Baffled.

I have been trying to come up with that word... a word to hang on to for the year, to work toward, to be guided by. I still don't know. I'll let you know when (if) I figure it out!

Am I being annoyingly vague? Sorry. It's just how our life is right now. If there's anything I feel sure of today, it's that we must more and more closely tune our ears to the Voice that whispers to us on a "need to know" basis. We must constantly think in terms of His Will. Where do you want me now, Lord? What work can I do here, with this challenge? Show me where my next steps should go. Better yet, carry me, Lord. Only You know the way. 

We have been here many times before, but not perhaps so completely. That feeling of control we so often take comfort in? It's just an illusion. When it's stripped away, that awful feeling is really a blessing in disguise. Then we really live in truth, the knowledge of our dependence on Him for our every breath. It's OK not to have all the answers, if we put our confidence in God.

I'm stealing this spectacular scripture quote straight off a post from Flower Patch Farmgirl, because it is so powerful for these moments we all face sooner or later.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil.
-James 4:13-16 NASB

Wow. I don't know about you, but that makes me really uncomfortable, yet its truth resonates. So I'm choosing to also hang on to another verse which, together with the one above, gives me the security to forge ahead with the expectation of unknown blessings in the year ahead.

'For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope.
-Jeremiah 29:11 NASB

Praying for unique blessings and a knowledge of God's care to carry us all through 2011!