Rest

My husband and I bought a new home a few days ago. We are camping out in it while we wait for our furniture to arrive from the other place. In other words, we are sleeping on an air mattress, using paper plates, and eating a lot of fast food (when we aren’t too tired to eat), because the refrigerator is coming next week after the furniture is delivered.

Sleeping practically on the floor and eating out of bags while sitting in camp chairs has been challenging….and also revealing.

The really interesting thing: I actually enjoy camping. Tent camping, even, with no plumbing. My husband and I have had some really awesome camping trips. Great memories. And the time it rained non stop for 27 hours is one of our fondest memories.

So, no, I am not unaccustomed to “roughing it.” However, camping out in your new home, after living in the old one amidst about 200 boxes is somewhat trying to one’s patience. Hence, the “revealing” nature of the circumstances.

I am profoundly grateful to live in this century and in this relatively free country where we enjoy comfortable furniture, easily accessible food in great variety and secure climate-controlled dwellings. This brief season of constraint and restraint has awaked my awareness and gratitude for the creature comforts I’ve been given in this life, things I can so easily take for granted.

It is humbling to realize that for all our civilization and spiritual “growth,” so much of the dailiness of this life is still full of creaturely endeavors: bathing, teeth brushing, hair brushing, dressing, finding and preparing food, resting, eating, sleeping. We are, after all, God’s creatures. He made us, not we ourselves (Ps 100:3).

God is God, and I am not. And I am happy to be His. Happy in the new home He has granted us. Happy in the expectation of comfort coming along with furniture next week. Happy to know that He orders all my steps and intends that I should benefit from all His good and kind intention toward me.

While I’ve been “camping out” and sometimes prone to complain about it, He has been working on my heart to open my eyes in wonder to see His merciful kindness and great goodness.

What place in your heart needs refreshing? Where might you need to see with eyes of wonder all that He is doing? Take some time this week to look anew at things you may have taken for granted. Let Him refresh you. Read Psalm 23 in several different translations and meditate on His goodness and mercy in your life.

Until next week, rest in the pasture He has led you to.