Horizon

This past year I was blessed with the most wonderful monetary gift I could have ever been blessed with. It makes me at peace. It calms me down. It gives me a little sense of freedom from the busy life of a type-A personality college student. Any guesses?? Anyone?? Well, my wonderful Toyota Rav-4 has been quite the luxury for my sophomore year of school at High Point University. Whenever I desire to see the world, and get off of campus for a little while, I am so blessed to be able to just hop in my car and…drive. And, you see I drive a lot. I already have 5,000 miles on my car in a short 3 months. And, I have class over half of the day each day. I have a solution for why this is the case-I am quite an introvert. You see, many do not realize that I am about as introverted as they come: sometimes people just wear me out. And all I desire is some alone time with my God. Whenever we are still, and away from all of the distractions the world presents us, we can begin to hear the voice of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. As I talked about in the last blog, this voice is not audible (for me anyway) but it most certainly becomes louder and has lasting impact when we have enough quiet time to digest the calling from the Lord. There is one common denominator when I drive: I always seem to drive on the ever-so-exciting Eastchester Drive. Eastchester has two parts: Eastchester and Westchester, which connect two cities in the state of North Carolina. So, it is fitting that you will see me driving on this road quite often. When I drive, blasting Hillsong United at the loudest volume my car can muster, I always love looking up into the sky. The horizon is a place we very often forget to look, as we are so focused on the present-the dotted and dashed yellow lines separating us from other cars. We become entranced with the present: almost obsessed with it. Often in driver’s education they call this a sort of drunkenness or hypnotism. We become so spellbound with what is familiar we forget to look ahead! Isn’t this true in our own lives? We grow tired. We grow lazy. We grow complacent. And we most certainly grow sedentary. We forget the simple act of lifting our chins upward to witness the sun rising behind the hills, the snow on top of the mountains, or even the road work ahead of us. Our own lives are the fulfillment and compilation of what we do in these small, everyday actions. We are so fed up searching for the correct curtains to block the sun, that we so often forget to look at Christ’s majesty, and His creation. We focus more on burning the toast than the thought of there the wheat even came from in the first place. We are so obsessed on the daily duties, that the screaming “collision” or “road work” just yards ahead of us goes unnoticed. Many times there will be a large turning point in the road right ahead of us..but we cannot take our eyes off the yellow lines warning us of this bend soon ahead. Why is this? Simply, because it is EASY!



When driving on Eastchester, there is another thing I always notice. The birds! And, for many of you who read my blog, you are California natives and this word picture may not be as familiar. When I say birds…I mean BIRDS…EVERYWHERE. Eastchester seems to house the largest amount of small black birds on God’s great earth. They all love to perch up on the telephone wire right above the cars. And, they all sit so close together with no space in between them, creating a beautiful silhouette against the setting sun ahead of me. I love watching these birds. Nature is God’s depiction of who we are-right in front of us. Sometimes it is hard to see ourselves in others-but when it comes to nature, it seems to be a little easier to relate. I am fascinated by what these birds do. When it becomes too comfortable for the birds, one will take its wing, and push the bird sitting right beside of it off of the wire. It is not a kind little nudge, either. A full on force is required to get these persistent buggers off of their wire and fluttering into the abyss. Isn’t God kind of like this? We all love to flock together like birds of a feather. We often forget though that the comfort of our world, or the wire, is not to be taken for granted. We will always of times of challenges where we will have to find a new home. A new source of strength. And, this is when we search for God. As the birds leave the wire, they will often soar upwards towards the skyline, past where the human eye can see them. When we are nudged off of what makes us comfortable, we are forced to find a new wire, a new platform. And, often this is not what is “cool” or what is practical. We may not be warm sitting side by side with our friends. We may be in a foreign land, we may be living off of little, we may be losing a family member, we may be going through a sickness that world cannot heal. Where do we turn when we are knocked off center? Let us begin to turn to God’s Grace. To God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense. God’s riches are never ending. God’s riches are not ceasing. And God’s riches will never fail you. They may “shock” you a little bit (as I have often witnessed with the bird’s on the telephone wire), but it is for the good of your whole person. The Lord is training you to be a disciple. To be an apostle. To be a missionary of the Word for the World. Let us find ourselves relying on His grace instead of a wire of the world. It is steadier, and more consistent. We may get shocked, but we will always know where to fly back to. We may be alone here on Earth, but we will always know we have a safe platform in the Lord.

“Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.” Isaiah 30:18