Grace Notes & Announcements

Dear Grace Family, 

            Annie Dillard, a contemporary writer said “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.  What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”  We fragile humans can spend a lifetime yearning for something we don’t have.  We often ask ourselves why someone else is achieving a productive, happy, prosperous life, when it seems like all we do is struggle to make every tattered end of our life meet in the middle.

            We can spend a lifetime searching for what we think we want, or what we believe everyone around us has, never really appreciating what we do have. The truth is, we can’t live inside someone else’s life.  We never really know what someone else is struggling with, no matter how well we know that person. 

            I used to daydream about what I would do if I had the talent and looks of a particular actress/singer.  I thought that if I had her gift, I would be so happy with myself. My life’s ambitions would be within my grasp.  Then I found out that my idol had breast cancer.  I realized that she would likely change her perfect looking body for my cancer-free body any day.  Instead of working on myself, I’d wasted a lot of time longing to be something that was not what God had in mind for me.

            We all do it, but yearning for someone else’s life can often turn to full-blown jealousy, and it’s certainly a colossal waste of time.  We don’t understand God’s life strategy because we can’t see what He sees.  All we see is our little piece of the big jigsaw puzzle. “Why them and not us, God”?  That kind of thinking can really tie us up in knots.  Proverbs 14:30 says “A relaxed attitude lengthens a man’s life; jealousy rots it away.

            No matter how difficult your circumstances are, there will be someone whose life is a little (or a lot) more difficult.  No matter how fulfilling your life is, you will always see others that seem to have it better.  It’s just the human condition to long for what we don’t have.

            At the end of the day, we need to take a lesson from Job.  After all he had lost, he had the courage and faith to say “I came naked from my mother’s womb, and I shall have nothing when I die.  The Lord gave me everything I had, and they were His to take away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

            There’s a Southern Gospel song that says in part:

High upon this mountain

The sun is shining bright

My heart is filled with gladness

Here above the cares of life

But I’ve just come through the valley

Of trouble, fear and pain

It was there I came to know my God

Enough to stand and say

Even in the valley God is good

Even in the valley He is faithful and true

He carries His children through

Like He said He would

Even in the valley God is good

We don’t know what valley someone else has travelled that might have brought them to the mountain top they are enjoying.  And someone else’s mountain top might not look like ours.  But we can know this -- it’s in the most difficult times that we will experience the most encompassing love of our Father.  We don’t want us to waste one more second worrying about why someone else might have something we don’t.  Let’s take those precious moments to remember that even in the valley, any valley, God is good.

   Pastor Bobbie