Friday, February 11, 2011

A Heart for Hugs!

Do you like hugs? Almost everybody does - even tho' what feels like a hug might not look exactly like a squeeze around the ribs. Hugs come in other forms, you know - God's hugs especially! God's hugs sometimes come in the form of a needed parking spot or a narrowly missed traffic mishap or even ALMOST burned toast among a million other forms of a hug from God. Then again God's hugs may be huge "rib squeezing" hugs like peace in the midst of pain or blessing like Psalm 23 describes as oil poured on our head and then dripping down onto shoulders and arms and down to drip from our fingertips (blessing beyond measure!)
My mother used to pray about EVERYTHING - to the point it often embarrassed me! She prayed for parking places, phone calls, skinned knees and a million other things. She also rose early every day as a lifetime habit to pray in the quiet of the dawn through her "prayer notebook" where she listed prayer requests by the page. She even has a collection of these prayer journals (if she hasn't burned them) because she has filled many, many notebooks with the stuff of life for many people and over which she faithfully prayed. Not so much anymore as her mind has become more and more scattered in this her 90th year tho' she still sits with her prayer notebook on her knee.
Here's what I don't get: Why does God give me the parking spot I need and allow a tree to fall on the house of my friend at 5 PM on the same day my friend's husband died at 5 AM? (Believe it or not, my friend's response that day was, "O, I'm so glad Curt wasn't here when the tree fell. I'm so glad he had already slipped away from his terrible pain to a better place to live forever in the presence of the God he loved." What a woman!)
Just don't get confused by parking spots and falling trees and death and all the other stuff of life. The truth is: "The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He takes great delight in you. He will quiet you with His love. He rejoices over you with singing!" (Zephaniah 3:17)
The fact that God gives you a "custom-designed-just-for-you" blessing one day and the stomach flu the next DOES NOT mean He loves you the first day and not so much the next. God's song is still playing strong and true when you park your car or pull your toast from the oven and when you have the stomach flu or a tree on your house or a husband gone to heaven.
God's song over us dances unseen (and often unheard) all around us and invites us to find Him. He wants us to hear His song!
AND God wants us to do more than listen to Him sing. He wants us to hear His song with our hearts so we can follow Him in singing and hugging all the people He brings along our path every day! He wants us to live in tune with Him and to reach out with a heart-generated-hug and song to others living in silence and solitude longing for a song and a hug!

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