Manna in the Morning

"Please be patient, God is not finished with me yet!” It’s absolutely true... we are all works in progress. None of us has reached the goal yet... not in our commitments, or our prayer life, or our service, or our worship, or our maturity... we are still growing. The Apostle Paul talked about that in his letter to the church at Philippi. He said, “...one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on...” (Phil. 3:13,14) On the specific matter of prayer, Thomas Merton had this to say about not trying so hard in prayer, “How does an apple ripen? It just sits in the sun. A small green apple cannot ripen in one night by tightening all its muscles, squinting its eyes and tightening its jaw in order to find itself the next morning miraculously large, red, ripe, and juicy. Like the birth of a baby or the opening of a rose, the birth of the true self takes place in God’s time. We must wait for God, we must be awake; we must trust in his hidden action within us.” Let God work in your life today.

How do you handle problems when they arise? What do you do when a difficult situation demands your attention? I know some who run from problems and then the problems catch up with them and by then they are much more complicated than at first. I know others who are overwhelmed by problems and get depressed... but the problems are still there... they just don’t seem to go away. Elsie Seibel has an interesting approach to the problems of life. She quipped:

If everything turns out backward
That you try so hard to do frontward;
Just turn yourself upside downward,
And laugh from the inside outward.

All of us have problems and difficulties from time to time. God encourages us to bring Him into the process of handling our problems. There is a great statement that the Apostle Paul made when he wrote to the Christians at Philippi. He said, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!” That’s a good word to begin your day. Problems... big or small will arise today. Remember there is nothing that You and God can’t handle together!