by: Chris L. LaPorte

There’s something beautiful about drawing close to God as you see your strength slipping away. You abandon your soul, physical being and willingness to fight on to your greatest advocate. Although you may feel guilt and shame in giving up, even some souring in your heart, there is great relief in throwing up your hands and saying, I’m done, I’m out, I give up. I say to God, ” I hate this life and I can’t do it anymore”. 

I am angry, indignant and resentful of my current circumstances. What I once loved most in my adult life I now feel is the very thing that may just take me out and cripple me for good. It takes great pressure to make me cry and breakdown into sobbing. Yet the Lord ALWAYS comes through and gives me the words, the encouragement and news I need to press on 

As I read the soothing devotions in “Streams in the Desert,” by L. B. Cowman, I experience comfort, acceptance and hope. I am SO relieved that I get to go to Heaven when I die. This world has beauty but it’s so hard to see past the cruelty imposed on God’s creation and childish bickering, suffering and senseless violence. But I need to choose not to focus on the latter.  I choose rather to focus on the fact that there are still children being born, birds singing in a summer rain, kittens playing with foamy pink curlers hidden under the couch AND God changing hearts.
And when I behold the beauty of a shoreline, vibrance in the orange of a Baltimore Oriole and the intensity of a stormy sky, I must remember to hold lightly onto these jewels. The good and bad in this world are temporal and transitory. The joy of knowing and communing with God is lasting and even transitions from one dimension to another. I choose to focus on these things.