– Secret Place Insights –
(DUE to SURGERY I missed a post, and have also been unable to write new essays. I hope to begin again soon.) Dear One, as we sit in our quiet-time places, some make it a quiet-time hour, some more, some less. But most of us, at some point in our past, remember living life in the ‘not at all’ category. For you, maybe that was just yesterday.
If so, forget the regrets for not having done it earlier, and be grateful for all that God will share with you throughout the upcoming years, through His Word and His Presence. I doubt that He will greet you with, Where have you been? No, if your heart’s desire is to draw nearer to Him, I am quite sure that you will sense His pleasure, and His pleasure will become yours.
During our time alone with God, our minds often wander. When this happens, we have two choices, to halt the direction that our thoughts are taking us, as sometimes we should, or follow the wanderings. For there are times that the Lord uses wanderings for a purpose.
Such wanderings have, at times, taken me back to a certain conversation. A woman once said to me, “When the Holy Spirit asks you to do something you say, “Yes,” where I say, “No.” That caught me by surprise, for I had said no, more times than I care to think about. Not intentionally, but the results were the same.
Occasionally, from such thinking, my mind’s eye sometime sees a woman in a winter coat, hat and mittens trudging in the dark, up a sidewalk, leaning into icy snow and wind, while carrying a full basket of laundry to the laundromat, nearly a full block away. She has trudged that same walkway, which runs past our church, parallel to street, for nearly 26 years. It is still cold, the basket heavy, the woman bent.
I spotted the woman on a dark, midwinter evening as I was unloading the trunk of my car, in preparation for teaching a class. I glanced toward the street and saw a woman walking with a basket in her arms. At that same time I heard, “Drive her to the laundromat.” I hesitated. Lord, I have to get everything ready for the class by seven o’clock. It will make me late. Oh my, as if He didn’t know that.
Reluctantly, I called out to the woman. “Hello, hello.” She did not stop. Her ears were covered, her head down. She did not hear my voice. I yelled once more, louder, “Lady, lady, HELLO!” She kept moving, and moved from view. That was when I failed, failed God, failed the woman. For I did not run after her.
I have often wondered what God had in mind for that woman, and for me, other than just a lift? What might have resulted from the offer to drive her to her destination? The next day, as I reviewed the situation, I asked for forgiveness, and prayed that God would send someone else to the woman, so that she would not lose out because I had failed. As Scripture promises, God forgave me, but I could not forget the woman.
So, when I think of what my friend said about saying, “Yes,” to the Holy Spirit, I wished her statement was a completely true one. For if I had ran after the laundry lady, God would have guided that encounter, and His will would have been carried out. Instead, in my mind’s eye, my lady is still carrying that basket through a cold, dark night.
But thankfully, from all situations in life, if we are fixed on God’s purposes, good comes from it. My lingering lady serves as a reminder for me to be quick to respond with a “Yes,” to the Holy Spirit. In this blessings abound, and God is glorified.
“And we know, that in all things God works for the good of those who
love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28
Blessings,
Susanne
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