Devotions

  Father , I want a lot of things. I want the Reds to play well this season. I want to be a better cook. I want my plants to grow and explode with life in my garden. I want these cicadas to just hurry up and die already. I want chocolate. I want to have a marriage that lacks nothing. I want my family to all live long, healthy lives with their eyes fixed on You. I want my friends to come to know Jesus as their Savior. I want answers to hard questions. I want things to be immediate because I hate waiting. I want to be firm in my identity and stop seeking it in futile places.  I'm starting to feel a little like Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. "Daddy, I want a pony!" In all seriousness, though, I have a lot of wants and desires, Jesus. I take tremendous peace in knowing that You already know my thoughts. Your Word says that you know my words before they're even spoken... every thought inside my brain (...and You still love me enough to die for me?

 Spoiler alert: life can be just downright terrible sometimes. There can be terrible, awful, terrible things that happen all around us and it's so, so hard to see "the good." But we search desperately for it anyway. Cancer, famine, war, orphans... in no particular order, we all can name more things than we'd like that just plain suck . And I hear a lot of people struggle to justify "how God could let this happen" or ask, "If there's a God, then why is there _____" and I'm not going to be belittling these wresting questions, nor do I claim to have the answers to them. I think they're rational questions to ask, especially for those of us who have met this AWESOME, life-changing God who is the Maker of all things good and perfect. Because when things are terrible and we lose a loved one, or we don't get the job, or we get our hearts broken, I think a natural response is to ask this good God: "Why?"  Or even more pressing, &q