Meditations

I've started choosing a bible verse every morning to journal about and meditate upon throughout the day. I chose one a few days ago that I'm still chewing over. I thought I would share what I wrote to myself with the hope that someone else would find it useful. Perhaps as more things hit me, I'll share more about this journey in my little corner of the world.

Job 1:21b
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.

There is a praise song written by Matt Redman based on this verse called Blessed be the Lord. Here's how he puts it:

You give and take away.
You give and take away.
My heart will choose to say,
Lord blessed be your name.

If you haven't heard the song and are interested, this link will take you to a Newsboys version of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4abgC-fIxOw

I've spent enough time wallowing in self pity, which is not getting me anywhere. I'm sure I'm not alone in jumping immediately to the "why me" question when something goes wrong. What I need to do is turn my thinking around. Why not me? If I was once an enemy of God (Rom 5:10)then why do I deserve any good thing? I don't. Every gift is from God(James 1:17)and only because of his grace. So I should rejoice in the fact that my body functioned pretty well for 37 years. I can be grateful that God gave me 2 eyes so that one of them can still see. I can be thankful that TODAY I'm still able to function normally. Those are gifts. I can choose, along with Job, to say "Blessed be your name".