Look to God
The mountains are beautiful in the summer as well as all year round, through all of the seasons. There’s a unique beauty to the stillness that envelopes everything in the forest. The pines reach so far into the sky that it’s difficult to tell where they end sometimes. The radiance of the streaming rays through the openings in the trees, through the leaves to the ground, gives great illumination to foliage living there, housing an untold number of creatures. It’s peaceful, pleasant, relaxing. A walk there brings me to a place of calm. Nature itself speaks very loudly to me of the excellence, the omniscience, omnipotence, the love and protection of our creator. The beauty brings an awe of Him.
This is the place that Heather was walking today. Only, her clamorous thoughts were so overwhelming from a week packed full of the disruptions, she could barely focus. She didn’t go to the forest in the mountains to find peace. She wanted to exercise and was completely bored with the concrete and blacktop pathways she has always run on. Trying new things…that was the objective after the problems and chaos of this last week. Her heart was hurting, but she decided to “suck it up” and keep pressing on. Pressing on toward what? She didn’t know. She just knew she couldn’t continue in the ways of life she had been living in. In went the ear buds… “Let’s try a new type of music” she decided.
As she ran, she was completely oblivious to the beauty of the nature around her, or of God running with her. She wanted to “Feel”, so she listened intently to the music, trying to ignite some sort of emotion other than the frustration that she felt with life. Nothing. Change the genre. Nothing…nothing, nothing, nothing. In anger and frustration, she stopped, ripped the earbuds out of her ears and stood in the middle of the forest…lost, inside and out. “Why?” she cried, “what is the matter with me? I don’t even know where I am or where I’m going.”
Have you ever felt that way? Like you don’t know where you are or where you are going? Like you need to stuff your feelings and try to cope with the things that life brings your way and just blindly continue on?
What Heather doesn’t realize is that God is running with her; and, that makes all of the difference. He is there to help her. Psalm 121:1-2 says, “I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” If Heather would stop running and stop looking for change from other sources and look to God, her life would change.
Neither does her heart have to be so heavy. Jesus says in Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Psalm 46:1-3says, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.”
Hebrews 13:5b-6 states “God has said, “Never will I leave you; Never will I forsake you. So we can say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”
These are promises of God that you can trust. They are truth. He is there with you just as he is there with Heather. You don’t need to be afraid of people or the circumstance or of Him. God is mighty to save. Run to Him; Give Him everything, for He will help you. He will never forsake you or let you down.
Written by Lori Fleming