So Many Thoughts

So many thoughts swirling around in my head today. Too many to just focus on a single post, and yet there is a single idea that does make me pause to consider that magnitude of it.  It is a very comforting thought in difficult times and an encouraging thing on which to base my faith day to day.

First, John Eldridge's daily post today was from his book Desire.  The first part of the e-mail said this:

"This may come as a surprise to you: Christianity is not an invitation to become a moral person. It is not a program for getting us in line or for reforming society. It has a powerful effect upon our lives, but when transformation comes, it is always the aftereffect of something else, something at the level of our hearts. And so at its core, Christianity begins with an invitation to desire."

I carried that thought into the Sunday School class I'm co-teaching on C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.  But it was one of the verses attached to the e-mail that really struck home with me and a few of my friends.  Jesus ends his discussion with the Samaritan woman with this, "The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life" (John 4:14 The Message).  What a way to capture that thought.  And how encouraging when we face so many difficulties in our lives.  We have a well spring within us, gushing LIFE!!

In my current search for the next career situation God has for me, through the loss of a dear family friend rather suddenly, to all those little aches and pains that accompany nearly half a century on this Earth ... I have a connection to LIFE that gushes refreshment and renewal right inside me.  God's Spirit will not fail to provide what I need in absolute abundance.  The emotional comfort, the physical needs ... all of it is taken care of by a God I can trust completely.

Now I realize I've rambled a bit, but I think I gave fair warning about that.  The Crooked Path of life often comes at us in what seems like hyper-speed.  But God's provision - the LIFE in Christ he provides - will always be what we need, when we need it, and in overwhelming abundance.  I may not be able to focus my thoughts all that clearly, but God knows them and knows me completely.