Lord, I'm Having Trouble...

Lord, I'm having trouble feeling close to you lately. Of course, there has been all the commotion with people visiting the last week. Also, I know I can't rely on my feelings.

I want to think of you and smile instead of being worried I'm not praying well or doing something wrong. I pray I'll feel relaxed and happy in our relationship.

I'm so looking forward to seeing you face to face one day and holding your hand.

Life is difficult, but life was difficult for you too. You were wanting your task to be over so you could go back home. I feel the same.

I look at the world and see the terrible evil of ISIS, racism, human trafficking, drug lords and all the rest and think of you seeing it in detail every day.

Life looks so overwhelmingly sad to me. Yet you have told me that life is beautiful. I pray I will look on life that way.

There is beauty in a baby's smile and a parent's love. There is beauty in kindness, giving, sharing and loving. There is beauty in a sunset, a mountain or an ocean. There is beauty everywhere. The Bible says the earth is filled with your glory and I see that.

Turn my face towards your face. Let me always see beauty in the life you have given me and the life you have given the world.

God's Striving with Men.

Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years." Genesis 6:3

"From this passage we learn that the Lord by his Spirit strives with man up to a certain point.

There is a certain point beyond which he will not go, for sufficient reasons known fully to himself, partly to us. Two of these we are to notice for our instruction: First, he will not touch the free agency of his rational creatures. He can put no force on the volitions of men. An involuntary or compulsory faith, hope, love, obedience, is a contradiction in terms; and anything that could bear the name can have no moral validity whatsoever. Secondly, after giving ample warning, instruction, and invitation, he will, as a just judgment on the unbelieving and the impenitent, withdraw his Spirit and let them alone. The antediluvian world was fast approaching to this point of final perversity and abandonment."http://bible.cc/genesis/6-3.htm

Some commentaries say the '120 years' means God warned the people through Noah for that amount of time.

"The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time." Genesis 6:5

The state of the people of the flood was a horrible one. Without God to make us good, we become completely evil. God was so kind to warn them of their fate, but like Cain before them, they did not listen. It is sad to realize there were only a few people on earth who had God in their hearts.