A Parent's Love and Worry.

I said to my husband this morning, "I'm 65 years old and I still have trouble trusting God. It astounds me how little faith and trust I have."

I said this because I was thinking about my granddaughters. All three of them are now adults, ages 22, 19 and 18. They are getting jobs, traveling, and making decisions about careers. For better or worse, they are now on their own in this crazy world.

I was visiting them last week and I noticed that my daughter worries about them as I've been doing. We both know how the world can hurt you. Of course, I mean the people of the world. Those people aren't in love with the girls like we are. Those people can be mean, nasty and dangerous. We want to shield the girls from any harm that might come. The trouble is, we know we can't.

A person can go nuts with worry. This is not what Jesus wants from us. He says to trust in God in every situation; and it's no wonder, because worry is so destructive to our minds and hearts. I must give my granddaughters to God. I must trust he hears my prayers for them. I must trust he loves them even more than I do.

Even as I type those words I feel a peace come in.

I read in the Bible this morning, "Righteousness will go before Him, and He shall make his footsteps our pathway."  Psalm 85:13

"His footsteps will be our pathway." I thought of Jesus and how he said, "Follow me." He trusted his Father. Jesus never worried. He suffered, but he continually trusted God. I pray for his trust, his peace and his serenity. Worry comes into my heart every day; that is the kind of person I am. But I can pray every day too. I can pray for Jesus to fill me with himself and he has promised to do this. I can pray he will take my worries about my grandchildren and cast them into the depths of the sea, and I can believe he will, for this day. I can trust for this day, one day at a time.

Seesaw- Up and Down I Go.

In my spiritual life I see my emotions and faith in God seesaw up and down. For days I am up and full of joy, thanking God for everything. Then one day, something happens and I am down. I feel frightened and overwhelmed, sad and discouraged. Because of that I then feel embarrassed my faith is so weak. Joyce Meyer has taught me to quote scripture during these times and I usually remember to do that. But what gets me is how fast I can plummet from faith to despair!

My daughter told me I can't feel happy all the time. True, but I think what I meant was having peace all the time. When I don't, I feel guilty and believe I have let the Lord down. When I was thinking about this, I remembered Elijah and how he worked for God on the mountain top, praying for fire from heaven that did come down and proved to the people God was God and not the idol Baal. Then that evening Elijah got frightened and fled from  Queen Jezebel who had threatened to kill him.

After Elijah had run for 40 days God came and asked him twice, "Elijah, what are you doing here?" Then He sent him back to finish the work God had for him to do. God had not sent Elijah into the wilderness. And God was so gentle towards Elijah's lack of faith.

I guess if Elijah can get frightened and try to run away, I shouldn't feel so bad about myself. I'm no Elijah.