The Gifts of God

 

Almost every Sunday morning I start the day by driving through our local refuge. There’s some thing about the stillness and beauty of God’s nature that helps get my heart and mind in the right place to be with God’s people. Today several of the roads around the refuge were closed because of flooding from heavy rain the last week.

The rains always remind me that we cannot predict God‘s goodness to us. We might have a pretty good idea, especially now with our advanced technology, of when the rain will come. But there’s still so much uncertainty about exactly where and how much rain will fall. In the same way we might generally think that if we live in active certain way that God will be good to us. But there are times in our life that God‘s rain falls on us, in times in ways we never saw coming. His goodness and mercy comes to us, even when we don’t deserve it. The Bible promises that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. God continually gives us gifts that we do not deserve, graces that we have not earned, blessings that should not belong to us. God’s rain is just one of those mercies. Gods rain is part of his plan for sustaining and upholding the world as it is.

Today (April 24th) at church marks 10 years for me as pastor of First Baptist Tishomingo. Or at least at marks the day we are celebrating with a lunch and fellowship. It is the Baptist way. I didn’t know it when I started, but it has been one of God‘s mercies to me and my family to be able to pastor here. I could not have predicted how God‘s mercy would come to us in so many multitudes of ways over the past decade. I certainly have not earned this blessing, and do not deserve it. But the promise of God‘s mercy, the newness of life the rain brings, the testimony of God‘s goodness as seen through nature reminds me that God is always in control. Thank goodness for that. I can’t say with certainty that 10 years ago I would’ve asked for things to turn out this way.

But just as He does, just in His right time, God gives us what we need. He always does, and He always will.