It's a God thing

I pulled this from my archives because I needed this reminder that God is in complete control. I needed reminding that God intensely cares about our most mundane problems and that He will go out of His way to reassure His child that He does care.

Numerous times God has spoken to me or given me a delight for encouragement. Oh, not out loud, but in such a way I knew it was Him talking to me.

I was on my teeth-grinding drive home from Arizona after my second husband decided he didn't want to be married anymore. I was devastated and I kept wanting to turn back. God kept nudging me forward. Finally, the whole western sky was a brilliant orange and I heard plain as day, "I've got your back." That night as I lay in a hard, motel bed, I was sobbing my eyes out and crying out to God, "Why?" "What is so terribly wrong with me?" I felt Him press me into the matress, covering me with His hands, and I heard, "You are acceptable to me, beloved. You need only worry about what I say." The next day, my heart was lighter but I was still angry.

Along about Albuquerque, I was enjoying the sun on the snow. I'm a Southern Magnolia and we don't see snow much. Only often enough to know what it is when we see it. For miles and miles the pristine snow stretched out on both sides of the interstate highway. So I got a thought in my head about bringing some of that snow back to sweltering Louisiana. I didn't have a thing to put it in except a plastic bag. But, I decided to stop.

Photobucket http://s6.beta.photobucket.com/user/Oliviamonteith/profile I had no idea how rare rabbit and deer tracks on top of each other are until I started looking for an example. I found zero examples!

At the next exit, I drove down the ramp and pulled to the side of the road. Right where I stopped, there were some deer tracks angling from the north, across the road through the ditch and around the maintenance building then off into the distance. A jack rabbit had hopped directly from the east right over those tracks. What a find! I scooped up those deer tracks and rabbit tracks, putting them in the bag and tossed it into the seat next to me. Back on the road, I chuckled and then laughed out loud. God is so funny. Only God could have directed the timing of those animals and the timing of my arrival to the exact point of intersection on that day at that hour. All I had to do was glance in the seat beside me at that melted snow and I would grin. The lighter mood lasted the rest of the way home.

I stopped in Amarillo for the night. It was freezing cold and it must have snowed after I laid my head down because I had to scrape a goodly portion of ice and snow from the windshield. There's wasn't a cloud in the sky when I set out. The first flush of dawn was just a thought in the back of God's mind. 
He had done a spectacular job on the stars.

When I hit Wichita Falls and turned south, the sky was crystal and I remembered something about a green flash that happened right at the second the sun touched the horizon; the atmosphere acts like a prism for about a half-second. You can read about it here. Not many people get to see this because conditions must be exactly right so I decided to watch for it.

I saw the first rays streak across that crystal sky and it was so beautiful it took my breath away. Amazingly, there were no contrails of airplanes, just the wide sky with all kinds of blues stretching across the expanse. In the space of about a second, I glanced back at the road with a sigh because the green flash had not happened for me that morning, sipped my coffee and thanked God for the morning.

Then right at the horizon, the sky turned this brilliant emerald green, and the color flashed across the sky from east to west. I was stunned. It was one of the most spectacular things I had ever seen and it happened so quickly I could have missed it with the blink of my eyes. The sky was just like an emerald winking in bright light.

I pondered the wonder of that through Dallas and then home. God reaching down to me to give me a delight to lift my sore heart. That road trip was best thing I could have done to start the painful process of healing. It was just me and God on the road. I learned a lot about myself and about God. He absolutely does care deeply about each of us and what happens to us. He's right there every second, in total control.. like with the deer and rabbit tracks.

There in the seat was that bag of melted snow. I brought those deer tracks home to my Daddy. What a hoot that was!

"What's this?" Dad cleared his throat as he peered through the water in the bag.

"Deer tracks and rabbit tracks," I tossed at him dragging my suitcase from the back seat.

"Whaaaa--deer tracks!"

I told him what I'd done and where I'd scooped up the snow. He started laughing then and chuckled every little while then he told Mom, "I'm bringing that to church tomorrow." She just laughed, fully aware of the "Top this!" game that he and someone at church were constantly playing. They would each bring something back from a trip... some gag gift or novelty toy and give it to the other just to watch the grins and hear the chuckles from everyone. Whatever it was, it would cause a stir in folks as they tried to figure out what it was or would laugh over the saying on the thing.

On Sunday, after I got my coffee at church, I passed a clump of people peering into that bag of water and one fellow was saying, "Yeah... I think I see it. What was it again?"

It's a God thing.

Blessed are ye who weep now, for ye shall laugh Luke 6:21b