I believe God often teaches us lessons through the things that happen in our everyday lives if we have our eyes and ears open. One such instance happened to me the other day, and it involved an umbrella, a security system, and a dog. We were about to leave the house and it had just begun to rain. We have this precious little dog, who we try to protect from even the rain, so we always use a large umbrella to attempt cover both human and canine, while canine does her business on the lawn. I had taken her out, and placed the umbrella, as I always do, on the front porch, leaning against the place where brick meets shutter, so it can dry and is ready for the next outing.
We left the porch light on when leaving the house, knowing it would be dark when we returned. Turning into the driveway I noticed the umbrella was gone. We immediately began to speculate about what had happened. “Could it have blown away?” Mark said.
“We always leave it in that same spot, and it’s never blown away before,” I reasoned. After some discussion, we concluded that someone must have stolen it. It was disturbing not because of the loss of the umbrella, but because of the knowledge that someone could be casing the house and had probably looked in our sidelights to see the interior as they swiped the umbrella.
Adding to the uneasiness this created for us, was the fact that one of the door sensors on our SimpliSafe security system was not working, and we were not sure that the whole system was even operational at that point. We had not had time to make the call and try to troubleshoot the problem yet. So, we were somewhat unsettled during the night, knowing that we were perhaps being watched and that our security system might not alarm if an intruder were to break in. As you can imagine, this was not the best night’s sleep for either of us.
The night passed without incident, however, and the next morning, I went out with Lucy again, and what did I find, but that umbrella in the flower bed – it had in fact blown there the previous night, but we couldn’t see it in the dark. We had spent the whole night operating under the wrong assumptions. We didn’t have the truth. Not having the truth led to fear and anxiety, to speculating about scenarios that would never come to pass.
You probably see where I am going with this. Operating without The Truth always leads us in the wrong direction. Fear comes when we don’t operate in the knowledge of the Truth of God’s omnipresent and sovereign Hand at work in our lives. Fear comes when we don’t trust. Elisabeth Elliot once wrote, “Fear arises when we imagine everything depends on us.”
His word is Truth. Jesus said, “I am the way, the Truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.” Jesus is full of both grace and Truth, the Truth that illuminates every situation.
His Truth is transformational, and his Word is life.
He wants us to live like we know it.
Life By The Way 