God Is Able to Hold All of My Life in His Gentle Hands

I have found it to be true that God holds the whole of my life.  And he holds it all at one time.  I can only live in the present.  I may think about and dream about the past or the future, but I can only live in this moment.  But God holds all of it.  He knows the whole of it.  He knows how the trials of today will result in the refining of my character later…sometimes much later. 

The important part of this is that I don’t have to worry about the whole.  I don’t have to be nervous or anxious about tomorrow and its possible defeats or hardships.  I have lived enough to know that He saw me through the other things and will see me through today and what comes with tomorrow.  I don’t need to live impoverished today because of what might be tomorrow.  I can love generously and give generously.  I am frugal by nature and sometimes I think about how Social Security will not exist when I’m old enough to receive it.  Maybe it will be – it’s hard to determine how quickly those days will come.  I think about how I might not have a job and shouldn't I be living more frugally and working to make more money and saving it all now. 

Sometimes this mindset is good and what keeps me from blowing money on stuff that doesn't matter.  Sometimes it keeps me from giving to others more in need than I am.  And sometimes it even keeps me from delighting in the now.  I’m trying to live well.  I’m trying to use my time and money wisely.  I fail most of the time and that is disappointing.  I’m getting better though.  The thing is this is not even the point.  The point is to live knowing that God has “got this” as my daughter would say.  It is important to give attention to the ones we are with and the gifts that we have now that may seem like irritants in the moment. 

God holds all of this and so many other things and he is gentle to the hurting and fragile.  He is powerful to the stubborn.  I am both and he is both.  When I am broken, he is there to pull me up and hold me together.  When I happen to chance a glance at the broken world, he also holds me together and gives me strength.  When I think I know better than he does, he is faithful to bring me back to my knees.  He holds all of my life. 

It’s interesting to me that this list of truths really just build on one another.  While I’m writing all this prose about them, they really stand alone and lead to each other.  It is interesting again the tapestry that makes up my belief system and how that has been tried in my life experience and that these remain true.  In case you have been following my writing in May, I started with a list of things that I have come to believe to be true - rocks of stability on my path or perhaps markers to point the way.  I've started going through them one by one and writing more.  I plan to go through them all, although I make take a detour now and then.   I need the reminders and maybe someone else does too.