How He Loves!

"He is jealous for me. He loves like a hurricane, I am a tree bending beneath the weight of His love and mercy."

I love this visual. I can also now appreciate the metaphor a little bit more in depth after experiencing, well, a tropical storm. It was supposed to be a hurricane, but Irene had weakened by the time she hit us. Something that I noticed during the storm though, something I hadn't ever realized while singing this song before; the high winds tear branches, leaves, needles and anything else that is remotely dead off of a tree. It tears some living things too, but it is really quite refining. There are these dead or mostly dead branches that are just hanging on to the tree sucking up water and energy from the tree, but not giving anything back. These are forcibly torn off. Like gold in a fire, the wind cleans the trees.

Sometimes, we aren't focused on God. We focus on things of this world, things that take and take but give nothing back. God gets jealous for us and sends a hurricane of his love and mercy to tear off our burdens and distractions, to refocus us on Him. It isn't usually comfortable (some of those trees were bent almost sideways) but as long as you have deep roots, you will not be toppled.

Let it rain on me, Lord. Let it rain.

A Promise

I'm scared. I don't know what the future will hold and it sucks. I'm very much the type of person who needs to have things planned out, schedules written down and a step-by-step process with important things like my life. Not knowing what my life will consist of once I graduate college (heck, not knowing what will happen tomorrow) scares me. I don't like it. It makes me uncomfortable. I know that God has a plan for me, but what if I screw it up? That can happen. I can choose a plan other than God's plan to prosper me and give me hope. I have free will. What if I somehow screw it all up?

Then today I was reminded of a story. There was this really great, awesome man of God. God actually straight up told this guy how awesomely great his life was going to be and how everyone was going to remember him. And you know what he did? He went and slept with a woman who wasn't his wife and had her husband killed. King David, a man after God's own heart, a man who could see prosperity, who had everything he needed, took more than was his to take. But here is the cool part; God forgave him and still worked his plan through David. David messed up. He turned from God's promises, but God didn't turn from David.

God has given me a promise too. He has promised to give me a future, a promise to prosper me and not to harm me. A promise for hope. I might stray, although I pray that I stay on course. Either way, God's promise is good. God is good. And I need never fear.