The planting

I hope you have all had a wonderful, restful, safe holiday weekend! In most parts of the country, today begins the new school year...I watched the little ones in our community make their way to the bus stop this morning - new clothes, new shoes, new backpacks! Everything fresh with the promise of a great year. I pray that it is so.

This morning as I settled in with my Bible, devotionals and cup of blueberry coffee, I had an interesting conversation with the Lord. I told him how hard it is to "know" if I'm staying in His will. It's not like I have a road map or a set of plans. When you're taking a trip you follow a map. You know pretty quickly when you start seeing things NOT on the map that you've made a wrong turn somewhere and need to double back. In my life as a Christian, my road map, if you will, is the Bible and my prayer life. And if I make an egregious error, then yes, I'll know I need to double back. But life is usually much more subtle than that. So my question to the Lord this morning was, "HOW do I know...?"

Are all of you as amazed and uplifted as I am when time and time again, God speaks to us directly through His Word? And the Holy Spirit ensures that our eyes and hearts are receptive...

As my Sweet Hubby and I continue on in our "One Year Bible" today's Old Testament reading brought us into the Book of Ecclesiastes, believed by many interpreters to have been written by King Solomon, son of King David. The Bible calls King Solomon a man of unsurpassed wisdom and unrivaled wealth.

And it was through Solomon's words that I received the answer to my question.

"Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God's work from beginning to end." Ecclesiastes 3:11

Yes. My heart yearns to spend eternity together with the Father, so I desire to be in His will - not my own. I seek His way, His path. In this life I know I'll make wrong turns because I am a sinner. But through Jesus Christ I can know repentance and forgiveness.

But it was the last part of that verse that got my attention. The verbiage was a little different, but the meaning was clear. I may feel like there's no road map...but nothing could be further from the truth. My God sees the entire journey from Alpha to Omega and as long as I surrender control to Him, all is well with my soul.

I feel better now!