IF YOU LOVE ME, LEAN HARD

 

Facing some uncertain things right now, I could not wait to run into the arms of my Daddy yesterday and spill it all out to him in my journal.  I asked him some hard questions.

Daddy, in your word it talks about never seeing the righteous begging for bread, but I do see your kids desperate like that sometimes.  What about your people running from ISIS in the mountains of Iraq?  Daddy, it looks like sometimes you don't take care of your kids - you let them die.  What's up with that, Daddy?

"Then what happens?"

They're with you, and everything is ok.

But they suffer so, Daddy.  Will I suffer so, too?

"I am your Daddy.  Trust me.  I will provide for you and your little ones."

Daddy, I have no more little ones.

"Yes, you are a mama to many little ones.  They watch you.  They learn to trust me by watching you.  If you love me, lean hard."

Give me a scripture, Daddy.

1 Samuel 11:1-11.  God's people at Jabesh Gilead were attacked by the Ammonites.  The people tried to make a treaty with them, but the Ammonites gave them one condition for the treaty.  They would gouge out the right eye of every person of Israel, so that God's people would live in disgrace. God's people asked for 7 days to decide if they would submit to this condition, then they sent word to all of Israel to see if they could get some help or not.  Newly crowned King Saul heard about it and gathered the troops in their defense.  During the last watch of the night before the city of Jabesh Gilead was supposed to be handed over to the Ammonites, Saul sent 3 divisions of soldiers into the Ammonites' camp and slaughtered them until the heat of the day.

Never mind that all of this happened right after the prophet Samuel had told the Israelites that they had sinned against the Lord in even asking for a king.  Would God reject them for their rejection of him?  No, instead Samuel tells the people, "For the sake of  his great name, the Lord will not reject his people, because the Lord was pleased to make you his own." 1 Samuel 12:22.

Daddy, you were somehow pleased to make me your own, to be able to say, this one's mine - that pleased the God of the Universe, the King of all creation.  Why in the world did it please you to make me, Taffy Spaloss, your own?

And he whispered in my heart some of his reasons, as he will whisper to you when you ask him what he loves and treasures about you.

I thought then of Hinds Feet on High Places, and the times Much Afraid chose to trust her Shepherd when faced with impossibilities along her journey to the high places.

"Here I am, your little handmaiden, Trusting in Uncertainty."

Here I am,

Resting in your goodness.

Leaning HARD

On your everlasting arms.

Placing all that I have, 

All that I am, 

On the One who says of me,

"For the sake of my great name,

I, the Lord, will not reject you,

Because it gives me great pleasure

To make you my own".

Taken from 1 Samuel 12:22.