I never cease to be amazed at how the Lord encourages me by using people whom I have met only through their written words. What a powerful medium written words provide for sharing with one another. One writer that makes indelible impressions on my soul every time I read one of her devotionals is Lettie Burd Cowman . She wrote a devotional book called Streams in the Desert, during the trying time she cared for her husband Charles, as he battled a long fatal illness. Through daily entries, she shared with the reader what she learned about the character and purposes of God as He uses suffering to communicate with us. (Suffering, another powerful communications medium.) Along with scripture, she would often add an anecdotal story, and thoughts and poems from other sources that encouraged her.
This is what I read today:
(Speaking about Moses)And when forty years were expired, there appeared to
him in the wilderness…an angel of the Lord...saying....now come, I will send
thee into Egypt" (Acts 7:30-34).
Often the Lord
calls us aside from our work for a season, and bids us be still and learn ere
we go forth again to minister. There is no time lost in such waiting hours.
Fleeing from his
enemies, the ancient knight found that his horse needed to be re-shod. Prudence
seemed to urge him on without delay, but higher wisdom taught him to halt a few
minutes at the blacksmith's forge by the way, to have the shoe replaced; and
although he heard the feet of his pursuers galloping hard behind, yet he waited
those minutes until his charger was refitted for his flight. And then, leaping
into his saddle just as they appeared a hundred yards away, he dashed away from
them with the fleetness of the wind, and knew that his halting had hastened his
escape.
She ends her devotional with words from another writer who is dead, yet speaks preacher/teacher A. B. Simpson - "So often God bids us tarry ere we go, and fully recover ourselves for the next stage of the journey and work. Lord teach me to be still and to know that thou art God and all this day to walk with God." --Days of Heaven upon Earth
Presently, I am waiting. But no longer simply sitting, marking time. Praying expectantly, that God will renew my soul for what awaits around the next bend.
