“God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons we could not learn in any other way. The way we learn those lessons is not to deny the feelings but to find the meanings underlying them.”
-Stanley Lanquist
Tonight my God turned my anger and despair into joy; my turmoil into peace :D
It was one of these muggy twilight early summer evenings I was walking home from the bus stop....full of the memories of a lovely evening and happy to be alive - enjoying not thinking about some of the negative moods I had been in earlier on in the day.
As I cross the road a guy from a taxi yells at me 'you're ugly'
In response I turned around and gestured rudely - I'm not even sure what was going through my head at the time I simply didn't want him to think that he could get away with it.
I think my 'normal' response would have been to ignore him/them...
I spent the rest of the way home being ANGRY
Angry with him - for the spitefulness, disrespect (and a million and one other things that I could angrily mutter) of it.
Angry with myself - for letting it get to me, for actually considering the statement as a possibility and for my reaction. Worrying that I was taking it to heart, thinking about it too much and making it harder to let go of.
Angry about the power of words - because we all pretend that words don't matter, but a word has the power to build up or destroy, no matter how small the word/comment.
As I got closer to home I wouldn't have been surprised if there had been steam coming out of my ears(!) I was glad I retaliated, hurt and very angry.
I thought:
'I'm going to have to remind myself that there's no way I'm ugly.'
So, when I got home I picked up the 'NIV Daily Light' (http://www.eden.co.uk/shop/niv-daily-light-bible-hb-1235451.html) and flicked to tonight's verses which are:
Psalm 103.14
For He knows how we are formed, He remembers that we are dust.
Psalm 139.14-16
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
Psalm 78:38-39
Yet he was merciful;
he forgave their iniquities
and did not destroy them.
Time after time he restrained his anger
and did not stir up his full wrath.
39 He remembered that they were but flesh,
a passing breeze that does not return.
Acts 17:28
'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'
Some of you might say that the fact that these verses were relevant and that they spoke to me in a very personal and real way at that particular point in time was a coincidence - but I know that in this case there was no such thing.
I am so grateful that God loves me as His own daughter that I can call Him 'Abba Father' and that He never changes.
He hates it when the children that He loves listen to the other voices that are ever-present in this world.
Whether it is the guy yelling out of the taxi window or an unconscious message hitting you from a billboard that tells you that you need to be like this person/buying something/losing weight to be a 'better person'.
God's gentle whisper is that He loves us, that He created our bodies to be looked after well but not to idolised.
That who we are rather than what we look like/how much we own will always be so much more important, because He sees our hearts rather than the face we show everyone else.
And, most importantly, that He is there for us no matter what.
Thankyou Lord that I am fearfully and wonderfully made!
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