Day 24 – Issue 14

Be Still Know

Psalm 57:3 NLT

He will send help from heaven to rescue me, disgracing those who hound me. My God will send forth his unfailing love and faithfulness.

While studying for my A levels, more years ago now than I care to remember, I had a ‘blip’. One lunchtime, bored, frustrated and feeling low, I simply walked out of school and took myself off to walk and read in the countryside. It was late spring, so the evenings were light and I felt the uplift I encounter when surrounded by the natural world. Returning home about ten that night, I walked into a storm all of my own making.

The school, unable to locate me, had phoned my parents who thought I was at school. Eventually the police were alerted. Fortunately, everyone put this down to the developing genius that the school chose to recognise within me as one of their Oxbridge candidates. I was given two weeks’ ‘rest’ at home, with the encouragement to read something for pleasure and not education. Win/win for me, apart from the distress caused to my parents during those brief hours.

In reflecting on this, I’m reminded that no matter what decisions I take and whichever paths I choose to follow, I am never that far from God’s reach and embrace. My meanderings are respected by the Divine, yet God never takes his eyes off me. However lost I feel, God still knows me completely. No matter where I run to, God still knows where I am. I am forever known inside and out by the One who made me. So neither my past nor my present excludes me from God’s embrace; only my own refusal to call out to God, who will in that instant save me from myself and my circumstances. Such salvation may not be removal from such circumstances. It will be a coming alongside in such circumstances.

QUESTION: Have you ever walked away from some situation, or someone, where you felt you had come to the end of yourself?

PRAYER: Faithful Father, thank you that you never walk away from those you have promised to be faithful to.