Feasts and Famines

Though I couldn’t put my finger on what it was or why, I was having a sad day and just had a longing feeling that I needed God today more than ever. While I do praise Him for that ability to want Him and to long for Him on the sad days, these thoughts entered into my mind:
Feasts and famines.
Mountain tops and valleys.
Ebbs and flows.
Winters and Spring times.
Ups and downs.
Promised Lands and Desert Wastelands.
Highs and lows.
Scripture’s sprinkled with them.
And, if we’re all honest about it, our lives are littered with them.
Your life.
My life.
The guy-next-door ‘s life.
Even the woman-living-down-the-street-in-the-cul-de-sac’s life is not immune to them.
What I’m referring to are the sad times, the thrilling times, the confusing times, the tormenting times, the I’m-so-happy-I-have-sprinkles-on-my-ice-cream-cone times, and the run-of-the-mill, regular, in-between times of life.
I guess part of It we could just label as (or write off as) “that’s life.”
That’s the way it goes sometimes, for sure.
 Perhaps, the up’s and down’s and all-around’s are just what life’s made up of.
However, sometimes, the “feasts” and “famines” of life are direct results of our faulty mental decisions and flighty emotional choices, which lead to physical actions and spiritual (or unspiritual! Eeee.) life REactions. After all, you reap what you sow, right? Another way of saying it, like my dear sweet Grandma Murphy used to quote, “You make your bed…. Now, you lay in it!” [haha, ohh grandma memories… love them!]
However, far below the surface of our own wants, desires, causes, and effects, lies the stark reality that God is not only present as a director-of-sorts on the stage of life; rather, He’s the script-writer. Nothing happens that skips His attention or overrides His sovereignty.
In other words, the “feasts” and “famines” of our lives are directly ordered, packaged, sealed, and shipped to our little houses as result of God, out of His deep love for us, reaching down and hugging our lives with His sometimes painfully-heart-wrenching, yet-fully-needed-and-necessary interventions. (For further evidence of this truth, see the entire book of Job.)
Regardless of the exact origin of our lives’ feasts and famines, they each serve as reminders to us.
A reminder that we’re all frail.
That we’re human by nature.
That we’re broken by choice.
 That we’re subject to roller-coaster emotions and cotton-candy-like feelings.
All of that to say: our frailty, our human nature, our brokenness, and our ever-changing emotions and feelings draw us to a solid, divine, whole, perfect, complete, holy, and unchanging God.
Buuuuut…..not only do these times in our lives serve as reminders, they. each. have. a. purpose. While I can no more give you the A,B,Cs or the 1,2,3s as to “why” God’s permitting/orchestrating such-in-such situation(s) in your life right now than the next girl, I can give you this hope:  God is ever-present. and ever-loving. He came to die so that you could live. And not just live any life, or have a hope of eternal life (though both of those are included!),…. He came to give you life, so you could live it MORE ABUNDANTLY (John 10:10b).  This time in your life is divinely purposeful for your ultimate good and His ultimate glory.
Today, in whatever season of life you’re in, find a reason to rest in God’s goodness. And don’t just take my word for it, either. Taste and see for yourself. KNOW that He is God. He is oh-so-gooood. And He’s is using your current life’s circumstances to remind you not only that you’re frail, but also that you’re HIS. And while you’re at it, know this: His purposes for you and your life are much higher and greater than anything you even have the ability to conceive or imagine on your own.
With all that rambling to the forefront, I close with this thought:
At the end of the day and now that I’m looking back, I wouldn’t’ve traded my awkwardly, out-of-the-blue sad day today for anything because it was used to draw me closer to the Creator of my day. Thank you, Jesus, that you don’t waste a single little thing.
Ohhh, I just wonder, what's He using to draw you closer to Him today?

Comments

Post a Comment

Reader's Favorite Posts

"That's Not My Name!"

Hey. Okay. Say, you just meet someone new. What’s the first thing you usually ask them? ….Usually, it goes something like, “Hi, I’m so-and-so. What’s your name?” Their name. You’re usually concerned with a person’s name because it stands for the entirety of their identity. Think of famous people you know, and as soon as you think of their name, you think of something associated with them. The same thing is true for family members, close friends, co-workers, acquaintances, etc. A name holds a lot together, so you can be especially sure that I began to have difficulty when my name and identity began to get mixed up. Before I get ahead of myself, let’s start at the beginning. Hello. For those of you that do not know me, my name is Rosemary H Hazard. But for some reason, the hospital got it all confused. To them, I was Rosemary D Hazard. Many times over, I told them, “That’s not my name!” But for some reason, the bracelets, tags, stickers, etc. all said the same old thing. “ Rosema
Read more

For inquiring minds that would like to know… here's our story.

For some of you in my life, you've been asking, praying, and waiting to see something noteworthy happening in my dating life. So have I. Because I don't exactly know where to start, I'll simply begin at the beginning. Jeff and I both went to school together at Trinity Christian Academy here in Jacksonville from kindergarten to twelfth grade. From first grade to sixth grade, we had all the same teachers. Because our last names are so similar alphabetically (Hazard and Hill), we were seemingly ALWAYS sitting next to each other. Seriously. Always. Around. Each. Other. haha… For those of you that know me well or have known me for a long time, you know that God's done quite the work in my life over the years in chipping away some (note: not all) of my childhood sassiness and giving me a sweet spirit in its place. However, for those of you that knew me then, you would readily agree that I was quite the "over-confident little girl" (to quote my daddy).
Read more

The Birth of Hope

The Birth of Hope  And then Hope was born. Hope Elizabeth. February 25, 2017. When she was born, all 95 percentile of her filled in a portion of my heart that I never knew was vacant. As most would agree, the birth of a baby tends to change everything. And for me, everything did change. And not just at the time of birth. Roughly five months after her birth, everything for me began to change again.  At the end of July in 2017, I experienced an mental “episode” that landed me in a mental ward at a hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. Later on, I would come to realize that this episode was due to two known factors: the diagnosis of hypothyroidism (my thyroid numbers were off the charts... even my doctor at Mayo Clinic said it wasn’t the highest number he’s seen, but it was pretty close) and symptoms that closely align with what is called postpartum psychosis. Postpartum psychosis occurs roughly in 1 out of 1,000 births, so I doubt anyone that I know reading this would fully underst
Read more