Change…

Somebody grab this lady a pair of glasses because I think I’m misreading the calender, it says it’s August! Lord have mercy, where in the WORLD has this year gone?  The dog days of summer are nearly behind us and I can feel the change in the air.  I mean, it’s still humid as ever here in the Carolinas, and the mercury is rising so fast it looks like the thermometer is going to burst, but can I just feel an excitement deep in my heart that I can’t explain. I believe it comes with knowing that the change of seasons is just around the bend.  I don’t expect an end to this heat over night or to mystically awaken to a beautiful brisk fall day, but I know that the cool relief of autumn is on its way. I feel like I’m in that stage now, a kind of in-between-ness. It’s the part of life where you realize that you are coming up on the end of one thing and the beginning of another, but not quite to either point yet. It’s a precious time where God can reveal Himself to us as never before so long as we are willing to be still and listen to all He has to say. I know that many of you can relate to that sentiment as well. There are things that God has spoken in your spirit, things that He has promised you, but you haven’t seen it come to fruition yet. Hold on friends, change is coming! When we come under the attacks of satan it puts us in what feels like a spiritual winter time. From the surface it looks a never-ending valley of  barren nothingness, but what the world, and so many times we ourselves, cannot see is what is going on beneath the soil. The cold harshness of the snowy trials provides us nourishment and the water we need to begin to grow and develop deep in the soil and in the hidden caverns of our heart where only you and God go. Every time the bitter chill of aloneness hits, it provides us with the strength to rely on Christ alone. When we’re in the darkest and most gloomy of freezing nights Jesus wraps us up in the warmth of His love through His SONlight and He shows us the way. Then before you know it the day that you never thought would get here has arrived; the first day of spring. Those spiritual seeds that were beaten down and frozen over by the storms of winter begin to sprout above the surface. Soon gorgeous blooms appear and the earth is over taken by the sweet smell of all the beautiful flora. It’s so hard to remember, but we need to keep in mind that our spring time doesn’t happen when we want it to. Just because we grow weary of the cold weather doesn’t mean that God is going to make it spring for us; that happens in His perfect timing. Every burden, every trial, every tribulation, every hardship, EVERYTHING that we go, no matter how difficult, is not happenstance, it is a divine tool that is used to shape us into beautiful outward reflections of our inner love for Christ for all the world to see. Are you ready for your season to change? I know I am. It is my prayer that when my spring time starts and it becomes my time to bloom that the world will see HIM and Him alone. I want to radiate the fragrance of the Rose of Sharon. What will you do with your winter? Will you let it’s harshness over take you and kill that spiritual seed that the Lord has planted in you? Or will you absorb it all to grow stronger from it? Will you pray daily and meditate on His word, come what may? Or will you turn your back on Him because it gets a little rough? Come spring time, what kind of bloom will you be showing the world?

In His Love,

Mimi