Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…
“Then the time came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Anais Nin
A bit of a cold front passed through this past week. Actually, it was a fairly strong front setting some records for low temperatures in various parts of the country. And it still seems a good bit colder outside almost everywhere as this morning continues to unfold.
We’ve been here before. We’re in the midst of fall, and with winter approaching rapidly from around every corner, we know things won’t be getting any warmer for a while now. Snow is expected today and throughout the week in the Northern Rockies and other parts of the High Plains states. And the weather forecasts are suggesting that the roads will be a bit rougher this morning in the east and mid-west, with rains expected in parts of the southeast.
Yet it’s warm, and safe and secure within the walls of our home sitting here with you as the day begins. A place I want to stay a while longer, or all day if possible. Not having to face all that is before me today. Ugh! Anything but that. Well, almost anything.
You’ve been there. We all have. Maybe that’s where you are today. And you don’t want to leave the warmth and security of where you are to what you know is waiting out there.
Life is a lot like that. Correction—life is like that! We wake up on days throughout the year facing cold fronts, snow flurries, rain and rough patches in the road before us. They often come wrapped with different names like: unanticipated changes in career direction, a job loss, major projects past due, relationships are on the brink of falling apart, our children have lost their way and have fallen under the pressure of the wrong crowd, the mortgage payment is past due and the bank account is empty, friends are not who we thought they were, an illness has descended upon a loved one and the outcome seems poor, we need to move or change but the risk seems too great, and we can’t see the end in sight.
There are a lot more we could name. And we’d often rather stay tightly wrapped in the warm, safe, secure bud of familiarity than to face any of them by whatever name. We can do that. We often do, at least for a while. That’s one option. But even in those warm, secure and safe settings, we know there is something else for us out there, something more we’re being called to, somewhere else we have to go.
Because that’s why we were created—by the God who created it all. For so much more than we often realize. Cold fronts will blow through. Rough patches in our lives will scrape away at our comfort and hope. Snow flurries will “white-out” and blur our vision and direction and often freeze us into inactivity and complacency. Rains will temporarily wash away the roads before us and at times, it seems, with it the dreams we believe are at the end of those roads. The warmth and security and comfort of where we are is where we want to stay. But that’s not what we were created for—for staying put and sitting secure in the familiarity and comfort of where we are.
We were created for so much more. We were created by Him to bloom—with Him. Jesus reminds us that…“I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” John 10:10b (NKJV).
We were created to live. We were created to blossom, to rise out of our bud, out of what seems to be the warmth and secure comfort of where we are. We were created to leave and live, to reach and to go. We were created, believe it or not, to be the ones to warm a world struggling through cold fronts, rough patches, rain and snow flurries— with our own warmth, our own touch and our own lives.
Tall order it seems on those days where warm, safe and secure is all we want. Tall order when we feel as though we are standing all alone, and yet we are expected to go. But a tall order that the One who promises to be with us—always—can handle with us.
The One Who will be with us when we are ready to step out and bloom into all we were created to be, and all we were created to do, with and for Him, and for all those who need the healing and encouraging touch of Jesus Christ—maybe even initially extended simply through us.
Cold fronts, snow flurries, rain and rough patches in the road ahead?
Get up, get out and go. Let the fun begin, with Him. On our way to becoming all we were created to be.
It’s what we were created for, and meant to be and do, for the rest of our lives.
In His Name—Scott
Copyright 2011. Scott L. Whitaker. All rights reserved.
