Going on a trip is exciting. Beginning with the inception of the idea through the loading of the suitcases, even the anticipation is fun. Then airport greetings and animated car conversations are full of promise for a good time together.
But backtracking our steps at the other end of a vacation isn’t nearly as inspiring. Although arriving home can be satisfying, the minute we step in the door, we hear the “have-to’s” of shifting gears. Even before we take off our coats, the pile of mail shouts for our attention. “Pay these bills! Respond to these letters! Look who needs you!” Exclamation points pounce on us from everywhere. Even the calendar hollers with the commitments we wrote on it the week before we left. “Get ready! Your appointments are coming right up!”
The refrigerator calls, too. “The milk is sour! Your strawberries are shriveled! Your sandwich meat is past its expiration date!”
Today as I came home, everywhere I looked I saw another exclamation point. “Unload the dishwasher! Unpack your suitcase! Do the laundry! Get organized for church tomorrow!”
It’s difficult to go from one reality to another, but life offers endless opportunities to practice shifting gears. When we were kids, our Septembers brought a shift in classrooms. College was a shift in our homes and lifestyles, marriage a shift from single to double. Parenthood forced major gear-shifting, followed by empty nest shifts.
For me, widowhood has been the most traumatic shift I’ve been asked to make, a change the equivalent of unpacking after a thousand trips. But I believe God is especially close to us during each of our adjustments, small and large. That’s because he’s never had to gear-shift himself, not for any reason. He’s everywhere, always, in all capacities.
Scripture gives us a word picture to help us understand this, telling us God has no “shadow of turning,” a reference to our human shadows changing as the sun crosses the sky each day. Unlike us, the Lord is constant and sure, thus able to bring stability to the shifts we must make. After he’s helped us through, we can look back and say, “That wasn’t so bad.”
Today, with all the exclamation points of change poking at me for attention, I stood in the kitchen trying to figure out which one to tackle first. For no special reason I opened the utensil drawer where the odd-sized cooking tools were askew and absently began to rearrange things. Pretty soon the drawer contents were on the counter, and I was fingernail-scraping-off sticky old shelf paper.
Before I was finished, I’d hunted in the basement for plastic dividing bins and washed them, wiped out the drawer, put down new shelf paper, washed most of the utensils, set some aside for Good Will and completely revamped my former storage system. All the while my carry-on bag was still on the counter screaming, “Hey! Unpack me!”
But God, as creative as always, simply said, “Before you do anything else, let’s bring order to this chaotic drawer. When you’ve corrected that mess, the rest of your gear-shifting chores will be easy.”
And he was right.
“The Father… does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17)
I cannot help myself; I have to tell you …. you are becoming more like me, everyday. And, I thought I was the only one that does stuff like this!
I am encouraged to hear that others do things randomly.SInce Jake has been gone I find myself doing things in different rodeos or just as I think of them.sometimes this makes no sense,but that is a little how life feels anyway.
Ruth
Hi Margaret,
I am also a Margaret and I am amazed a how we have so many similarities. I lost my husband Pete just a year ago. I have 5 granddaughters, one of which is an Evelyn. I live in Michigan and next week I will be in Florida. My heart is still in many pieces, yet the God that I love with all my heart is mending me bit by bit. How could I live without Him? It is hard enough to live “without” Pete, but it would be impossible to live without my Lord and Savior Yeshus. I thank God for finding you and your posts. They help. God Bless you.
Another Margaret in Michigan
Hi Margaret,
I always thought that phrase from Great Is Thy Faithfulness, “there is no shadow of turning with Thee” was beautifully poetic, but I never stopped to think about what it meant. Thank you for uncovering that meaning- what a great picture of the Lord being the same yesterday, today, and forever, at high noon, early in the morning, and all throughout the day and night. Darkness and light are alike to Him.
Lest you think for one moment that math is not everywhere, one of our freshman unit studies asks the question “how long is a shadow?” Turns out that the shadow is one leg of similar triangles created by the object casting the shadow, the distance that object is from the light source, and the height of the light source. 🙂 Makes for romantic conversation on a shadowy moonlit beach walk!
Love,
Terry
So needed this blog today. Thanks Margaret!!!!
Wow I was meant to find this today! My life has felt like this since losing my husband 2 months ago, and a job involving constant travel doesn’t help. In fact, I am sitting here aimlessly surfing,not knowing which exclamation point to slay first 🙂 Thanks for the reminder that God has it covered.
I loved this; I have been a widow for a long time….but lived alone before that…and found myself sometimes getting up in the night to get a drink or whatever…wound up rearranging whatever caught my eye..befoe I knew it..it was daylight…or just before I’d fall back into bed and fast asleep again…to wake up and find…something I’d intended todo long ago..I got done..no time flat!! God’s timing never ceases to amaze me!
Hope I get to see you next month!! Meantime…take care, stay well be blessed.
Love the practicality of creative order vs tasks! Maybe at the end of time we will find there were really commas, where we saw all those sharp, commanding exclamation points. And Terry’s explanation of a shadow…well, can’t wait to use that at our next dinner party:)
Thank you!!!!! Perfect!!!!!