:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

Tolerance for the trivial wanes when you’re going through a rough time. It helps you sort through what’s important and what is not important. As someone who struggles with anxiety, I tend to make many trivial matters important. As a follower of Jesus I need to continually work on sorting through what’s of ultimate consequence.

A pastor I know once experienced the loss of a child to miscarriage. He was down. Who could blame him? Someone called, not knowing what had happened, and asked how he was doing. “It’s been a rough day,” he replied. The caller proceeded to say, “You’re day can’t be any worse than mine…” and then shared the details of a day that the pastor characterized as, “Not a bad day.”

We’re not going through anything all that bad in comparison to this pastor, but we have a lot of pressure and stress in our lives right now that we’re trying to work through with an impending move and the daily struggle to try selling our house. I’m REALLY tired of people saying to me, “Oh, this is a terrible time to sell.”

As if I’m not aware of that. Sheesh.

We have time. Our situation really isn’t dire, but there’s that ongoing pressure of just trying to get this house sold. It can’t go on forever, and it’s going to be a pain continuing to sell it when we move down to Connecticut in August. And so the tension and pressure increases.

Meanwhile my worn little Bible reminds me to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and that I shouldn’t worry about such trivial things as food and lodging. Seek God and he’ll provide it for you. However, God also has this knack for taking care of business at the last second.

Think about the Israelites at the Red Sea with the Egyptians bearing down on them.

That has been God’s pattern in our lives and also in the lives of others. He delivers eventually, but man it’s hard not to sweat it out. This has radically changed my understanding of faithfulness or living by faith day to day.

Faith is this: jumping off the cliff not knowing what’s below or how you’ll survive, but trusting that God has a net, a bird, a plane, a pool of water, or just something, anything to catch you, to make things alright. Faith means seeking out God’s purpose for you each day, seeking to live a holy life, and not letting anything else hinder that.