Theme: Life - If Only...
Weekend Music links on iTunes: Sing To The King - Billy Foote, Let God Arise - Chris Tomlin, You'll Come - Hillsongs, Before The Throne - Shane & Shane
Read: Lamentations 3:19-26
Think: Every parent will hear the same lament from time to time, “it’s not fair!” At some point, many of us stopped saying this to our parents, and started saying it to God. And we are often right, because many things in life are not fair. Over the weekend, Pastor Ben spoke about the grief such unfairness causes, acknowledging that bad things happen to everyone. Grief, the burden of sadness caused by the loss of something precious to us, can create in each of us a longing for a different circumstance than what we are living, an ‘if only’ desire.
Living life to the full requires that we deal with the sources of our grief. For some, it may be a traumatic event. Others may have an extended season of pain in their past. For some, the ache may be on-going today. For all of us, our hope for overcoming our grief lies in trusting God. Pastor Ben offered two thoughts for us.
First, name what was lost. Think about the future that has been changed. Acknowledge that your world is now different from your earlier plans and desires. Then, allow God to move you beyond the loss. Trust Him to reorder your world.
In this broken world, a lot of really bad stuff happens. But as it says in the Scripture reading for today, ‘[God’s] compassions never fail; they are new every morning’. The circumstances of our lives may not be fair. But neither is God’s love – He goes far beyond fair, extending perfect love to each of us, always.
Do: Tell someone something unfairly good that you’ve experienced.Pray: Dear God, when I think about the painful experiences in my life, it’s easy to drift off to a place of bitterness, wishing for ‘if only’s’. You know the loss I’ve experienced. I need to know your compassion, God. Move me to a better place beyond my pain. Amen.
The eDevotional is written each week by a team of volunteers from Timberlake Church.