God is Faithful

"O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done marvelous things, things planned long ago." Isaiah 25:1

It's a good thing that God is marvelous. It makes me thankful that I'm a part of His creation. You know, it's really much easier to be thankful and praise Him for His goodness than it is to spend a lot of time complaining and whining. Max and I watched an old "Law and Order" this evening and one of the characters was a man who could not deal with the fact that his wife had been murdered 4 years prior. He was still angry and hurt and in great pain. If it hadn't been for the fact that he was a character in a television show, I wanted to tell him about Jesus Christ! That kind of anger and pain only perpetuates more anger and pain. I once heard a pastor say that unforgiveness is poison that only affects the person who refuses to forgive. And I think that the same thing goes for my relationship with God.

In my last blog "Snow Day, Lazy Day", I talked about complaining and being angry with God. I guess I learned about the fact that the Psalms teach us about those types of interactions with God from Beth Moore. I heard her say once that David, in essence, gave us permission to have that type of relationship with our Creator.

What I learned from my mother was that though we would have a wild and very vocal argument, it would be over with in 20 minutes and one or the other of us would approach the other and ask for forgiveness. Honestly, there were times that we weren't ready to forgive, we were just too angry. But, our relationship was so strong, that though it might take a few more minutes for us to calm down, we were always confident that forgiveness would come and the relationship would probably be stronger when we were done. The air was cleared, forgiveness had occurred and we still loved each other. I'm thankful for the safe relationship I had with her. I carried that into my relationship with my sister, but she didn't feel as safe with me as mom and I did. It took a lot of years for her to realize that anger wasn't necessarily the beginning of the end of a relationship. HAH! And we grew up in the same house together.

But, this experience with my mother is why I can fall apart all over God, throw my tantrum, question His actions in my life and still, by the end of the week be praising Him for His goodness in my life. I feel safe with Him! I know that He loves me ... through all of my insanity and my self-centeredness, He loves me.

And tonight, at the end of a long week, I am just so thankful for a God who comforts me, allows me to cry while holding me close and encourages me to fall at His feet in worship.