Half-time

Well first of all, I wish to say praise God!  I am as of 8/1 officially out of the ranks of the homeless!  God has shown me mercy, and I am grateful.  I am also grateful to each of you who have been kneeling with me in prayer and in fasting.  I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to express what your prayers have meant to me and my family.  Secondly, as many of you hopefully noticed (a few of you called me about it), I did not post last month.  I apologize.

I did not forget, but had some strangely overwhelmingly busy weeks prior and during that week.  I was helping the company to play catch up to our seasonal volume and for a period of several weeks I had been working nearly 18 hour days and during the second week of the month I was particularly busy.  I had originally been planning my return here for the beginning of July, and a few days before my planned switch, I was asked to remain where I was for an additional month.

At first, I was a little disheartened to be honest; after all it had already been 12 months.  But I would soon discover later that I was intent on making plans that the Lord was saying no to at least for now.  He placed a big 30 day long stop sign in front of me, and it took me 20 days to realize what it was.  But it gave me some time to affirm my trust that He has the right plan for me.

As I was thinking of what to post last month, a thought came to me that I have been holding on to.  I am still trying to make sense of “why did this happen?” and a football analogy came to mind from my recent post.  I had called it “Homecoming” in anticipation of my return to a more normative life.  As I have been able to reflect on it, I realized it might be something more.  In my life, the first half has been spent living as far from Christ as I could.  So in the often used analogy, “the game of life,” I had been losing miserably, failing at every attempt and plan.  I’d been losing the Super Bowl because I’d been running the wrong plays.

Finally, the Lord called me in to correct my life.  It is as though these past 13 months or three years have been half-time.  The Lord has been training me and scolding, and giving me the pep-talk of an eternity.  It is now, I hope, that the Lord is sending back out for the second-half.  After my big red stop sign, I am confident He still says, keep praying for her till He gives her and the others I’m praying for the eternal assuredness or rest in redemption that he has given me.

So, tomorrow 8/13 is Starving Second Saturday.  Keep praying and again thanks for your faithfulness.