Today's Verse: Psalm 27:13-14

"I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD."

Oh MAN. I hate it when I find exactly what I need to hear in the Bible. Mind you, not what I want to hear, necessarily, but what I need to hear. Actually, v. 13 is more what I believe in my heart, and v. 14 is what God is trying to hammer into my thick skull...

It's really hard to believe v. 13, but I know it has got to be true -- it is God's Word to me. And we could get into a really cool, intellectual conversation on the vailidity of the Christian Bible, how it has changed over the years, blah x3, ad nauseum. Really, what I think after it's all said and done is that the Holy Spirit has a hand in the modifications that have transpired over the generations. If God is truly sovereign and omnipotent, then even as much as we humans try to distort and edit the Bible, His Word will still accomplish the task for which it has been set forth.

Anyhoo, I think of Moses who saw the promised land spread out before him just before he died. This man went from a life of privilege to one of struggle and hardship, endured physical conditions in the desert and living off of God's provision for decades, tried to live in obedience to his Master despite the pressure and groanings of those in his care. All along, the Lord kept on telling him to just trust in Him, to keep on keepin' on, that He would bless Israel and provide this land for them. Just before Moses died (Deut. 34), Adonai made good on His word. Even though Moses never set a foot or a hem of his clothing on a single square inch of this hallowed ground, he laid eyes on it. He had physical, tangible evidence that our God keeps His promises. Now, Moses may have had a few opinions on God's timing, and we know what his opinions were about the whiners in the nation of Israel (and don't you think he's more than entitled?!?), but technically he did see God's promise fulfilled while he, too, was in the land of the living.

This just has to give me hope. As I sat by the pool today, watching prenant women waddle by, couples lounging lazily in the water together, thinking about my sweet cousin who got married today in Jamaica, I couldn't help but be a little morose. Why me? Why not me? God, why are you playing this game with me? Leave me alone! But you know what, I look at my life two years ago and compare that to present day. I had just begun to take an interest in dating after having lost Tom. I couldn't get anyone to give me the time of day. Two years later I have love in my life that I could have never imagined.

Which leads me to v. 14. Ever since 15 OCT 07, God has been trying to get this message through to me. He has subtly suggested it, sent the message through friends, and even put it in black and white in front of my face. I could see this text every day for a month and still have to be reminded of it. Some days I need the reprimand of the repetition of the phrase, "Wait on the LORD." Other days my spirits are low and I need the encouragement of the middle part: "Be strong and take heart."

"Wait" is not a word often heard in my vernacular. (That is, unless you are Bud or Lil' G, and it seems to be one of the only three or four words I seem to know how to say, but that's a different story altogether...) In my journey to become more self-aware and understand myself, and others, better, I know that I am one of those people who falls on the tip-end of the bell curve in many ways. I wouldn't quite call myself 'abnormal,' but I am definitely outside the range of what our wimpy society probably considers normal, and that's fine with me. Most of the time. The rest of the time it's extremely trying and frustrating. I feel like I do a lot of 'tolerating' in many ways, and this makes me cranky. Then I'm accused of being negative or some other lovely modifier.

To sum it up, patience is turning out to be such a painfully slow lesson for me to learn. I have a few options here, however: I can either repeat the mistakes of the past and reap a lifetime of stress and unhappiness, or I can slog through the life lesson and learn to live out what I proclaim to believe. The result(s) I desire are not guaranteed, and that is probably the hardest part for me to accept. And this is not limited to the romance department. This is all-encompassing in my life. So as God whispers v. 14 in my ear for the umpty-jillionth time, I go back to v. 13 in my mind and remember, if He could do it for Moses, He will do it for me. He has already been merciful and faithful beyond description in so many ways. Even if He never does another thing out of love for me, He has already far-exceeded any hope or expectation I could've ever dreamed up.