As you read, I really encourage you to play this song…“I Shall Not Want” by Audrey Assad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8WgHGOak1c
What’s breaking your heart right now? Can you put your finger on it?
Is your precious friend fiercely battling cancer? Is there a family you know who just lost their sweet baby girl? Are you painfully missing being able to talk to the person that “gets” you? Is your life so full of fires you can’t keep up with putting them out? Do you feel exhausted from the sacrifices you continue to make to save a relationship? These are just the surface of our realities, aren’t they?
We are programmed to avoid pain, discomfort, and sadness so it’s natural if we can’t instantly think of something that is breaking our hearts. But at some point, our hearts hurt. They hurt for what’s happened or what’s to come for us, for a loved one, for strangers.
There are storms around me. I feel them. I feel engulfed by them at times. Truly, since accepting my position in the World Race, the storms have increased at an accelerated rate and my heart aches more than it has in a very long time. But as this song is so beautifully saying, “When I taste Your goodness, I shall not want”.
If I’m in the eye of these storms, “I shall not want” anything less. Because here I am experiencing His goodness. I am experiencing His joy that surpasses all understanding. Keep me in the storms of my life and of others’ lives if it means experiencing this joy because here is where I feel alive, physically, emotionally, spiritually. If we experience happiness from avoiding taking on the pain of others, there is no true joy there.
Take me on the Race. Throw me into the the storms of others’ lives around Your world so that we may experience Your goodness and want nothing less.
Pain, trials, they will be there with or without God in our lives…I still ask “why” and struggle to understand but having Him with us overwhelms us like nothing else in this world can do. No best friend, no spouse, no adventure, no party lifestyle, no vacation, no child’s accomplishment, no paycheck… Yet just as there are trying times, there are blissful ones and in those times, we continue to “taste His goodness” and “shall not want” any more than what we have. That’s who God is and what His joy is- it’s the same regardless of circumstance.
“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” 2 Corinthians 4:8-10
This may not be where you are today (“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1) but maybe it is, or maybe it’s where you’ve been…please feel free to comment below or message me if you have found a way to describe the joy you’ve felt in circumstances that would seemingly be void of it, as I struggle to put it into words.
Hug for you,
Lisa (Toby)
