Oasis

At work today someone asked me how I was doing and all I could say was, "So So."

Sometimes that's all I can say to someone. I can't put on a happy face and don't want to really get into the details of why I feel the way I do. Heck, I didn't exactly know how I felt, just that it wasn't good. After this exchange I grabbed my lunch and walked out of work, across the street, and went and sat down under this oak tree in a small park that is a like a little oasis for me.

I started writing in my journal and then read some of a book I am slowing reading, The Sacred Romance by John Eldrigde. In the section I was reading it was talking about Lieutenant Dan in Forest Gump and how he struggled with God after losing his legs. We don't always need to lose our legs, or something that significant to struggle. It can be even harder when what we have lost is unseen. There are lost childhoods...lost families...lost innocence...to name a few. The book went on to talk about a section from Acts,

Acts 16:26-28

^"From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' " The author was talking about how God engineers our circumstances to draw us to Him. As I read those verses in Acts some other verse in Joel popped into my head.

Joel 2:12-13
"Even now," declares the LORD ,
"return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning."

Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity."

I felt God's love coming to me through these verses under this Oak tree while I was eating lunch. As I read through those verses more verses came to me.

Psalm 119:32
I run in the path of your commands,

For you have set my heart free.

And then John 8:32, 36

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

God wants me to know him intimately and he loves me. He wants to show his grace and compassion to me. Most of the time, I just need to slow down enough to spend some time with him. I need more times of rest under his Oak trees.