"You look like you're enjoying your walk," he
called as he opened his car door.
He didn't know me, but I knew him. We had met nine months ago during my first
visit to The Gathering—the beginning of my new life.
I recognized his face immediately, but knew there was no
recognition in his tone, just friendliness in reaction to him catching a silly
girl smiling at the sun shining on her shoulders after Sunday service. It was fitting that he didn't recognize me. The girl he met almost a year ago was not who he saw smiling today.
"Yeah..." I grinned, musing. "It is a nice day."
I kept walking until I found myself sitting on the
bleachers across the field from the school.
For just a moment, I sat.
I enjoyed the cool autumn breeze against my skin. I watched cars exiting the parking lot. I listened as people laughed in the distance.
So
much beauty in the world, I thought.
I relished the time I had to myself, reliving the last
ten months. Ten months of
loneliness. Ten months of sadness. Ten months of homelessness. Ten months of patience.
Ten months of absolute struggle.
And there I was.
So heartily content.
A whole new life ahead of me. A whole new girl. An entirely new love.
There is so much more for us than what this world has for
us. If we're not too quick to concede to its pressures, oh, the beauty we can behold. To be saved, to be loved...God's love and our salvation are the greatest beauties of all. Any pain we feel here is well worthwhile, right, Job?
And he said, “Naked
I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The lord gave, and the
Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” In all this Job did not
sin or charge God with wrong. Job 1:21-22
Delight yourself in
the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4
And we know that
for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are
called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28
He who did not
spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him
graciously give us all things? Romans 8:32
For the Lord God is
a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who
walk uprightly. Psalm 84:11
