The Dusty Road

Here is a quote from a minister who experienced the despair of forgetting what relationship with Jesus is all about--relationship with him and resting in him--this is the line:  "God made us from dust.  We're never too far from our origins."

Doesn't sound like much on the surface, but if you think about it a bit it is really quite true.  We are weak vessels that too often think we are bullet-proof.  Paul talks about us being 'clay pots', another vessel that, as Mark Buchanan says are "hard. . .but brittle too."

Our roads can be long ones.  They come with pot holes and road kill.  Sometimes we are the ones that do the killing through harsh words or hard hearts and sometimes we are the ones who get run over.  Either way, we can find our ourselves breaking because we are so brittle.

But this is not what the Lord has in mind for his children.  This is not the kind of road that he abandons us to.  There. . . .is. . . .hope. . . .

Our hope starts by recognizing what God has designed for our lives to thrive.  In Psalm 51 we read about David who had just had sex with another man's wife and was broken before God.  He was pouring out his grief and his guilt to God and found forgiveness and life there.  In verse 17 God tells us that He so deeply accepts hearts that are honest with him.  That's the beginning of hope, recognizing our sin and pouring our hearts out to God.  He rescues us from ourselves again and again.  There is no limit to his forgiveness.

I remember the dusty roads on the farm in the middle of August.  On some days it was so dry and so calm that when you drove on those roads, the dust would rise up behind you in clouds and just hang there forever.  Huge curtains of dust covering everything in your wake.  Often you could find yourself driving in someone else's dust-cloud and the visibility wasn't very good--it got hard to know where the road was or if there was traffic coming your way.

That's the way it can seem sometimes in our lives:  because we are 'dusty vessels' we can kick up a lot mess behind and around us that can start to blur our vision of what is good and right about life, and how God views us.

There is much I could say about this but I will end with this one thought that has been coming back to me day after day for the last while:  God loves you.  There is no limit to his love for you.  He offers it freely and extravagantly to you.  All he asks is that you will stop driving on that dusty road and allow him the opportunity to settle things in your heart.  He wants to fill in your 'pot-holes' and remove the 'road-kill'.  He will bring clear vision and a healing to your soul.

You just have to ask.

BT