My son is a Marine who has very recently left for Iraq on his first deployment. I miss Him already. His world just got bigger as mine just got smaller. Although I have been preparing myself for this day, I still struggled with sadness and anxiety when it finally came. When he left my false sense of security left with him. I was forced to cling and trust more in God for his safety then trusting in this great nation to provide it. People die everyday walking the streets in this big city. He carries a gun, surrounded by buddies, trained to the fullest, constantly on the alert and on the watch. He just might be safer then I am in reality. I still live in a false sense of security. He carefully monitors his every step and others watch him as he sleeps. But even this knowledge only leads me to cling to yet another false sense of security as I put my hope in his knowledge, in his training, in his weapons, in his buddies and in his commanding officers.
Times like this remind me of how needy, powerless and dependent on God we really are. It’s a prying our fingers loose on these senses of peace and security and re-tightening them on our real security, which comes from God alone. No one and no place can guarantee his safety. Today it is dangerous just to go to a grocery store and back. No one guarantees we will make it home from work this evening or wake up in the morning. Each day is a gift. And our life was created as a vapor. No matter where my son is, his safety and my safety and peace come from God alone. We are completely dependent on Him and must trust in His future grace as strongly as we trust in and remember his past grace to us. As his grace has met and covered our needs in the past, far exceeding our expectations, his grace promises to meet our needs tomorrow. So we are called not to worry, not to be anxious about anything; but to trust in his name and his grace, past, present and future to meet all our needs.
The LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him. – Nahum 1:7
I am a fearful person. I wish it weren’t so. I struggle with worry and anxiety a lot more then I would like to. It is such a negative and pessimistic form of fortune telling. God does not allow anyone see the future unless he has revealed it to us already through his word, his counsel, or patterns of his creation, cause and effect, history and experience. He intentionally left it blank to us yet teaches us how to prepare for it and face it by listening and trusting in him. He has ordained that it only reveal itself to us in drips, moment by moment which is all we can handle.
We can either place our faith and energy in our sordid imagination of what the future could and might hold, or in God’s foreknowledge, his name, and future grace to meet us there in the next minute knowing that he has already planned it with mercy and love from the beginning, nothing surprises him, catches him off guard or is outside of his control.
I have to constantly realign my hearts thoughts and fears back with God’s truth and trust in His name, grace and mercy to help me face the unknown. I constantly have to remind myself that God loves my son even more then I do. He already knows his future and determined his time. I can trust God with my son’s life, which was a gift to me but ultimately belongs to Him and one day will return to Him on His own timing and not mine no matter where my son is at. I intend to enjoy God’s gift of my son’s life to the fullest for as long as God allows me to until he is called home. And I will miss him so much when that day comes. I will grieve deeply because of the hole he will leave in my world. Once again my world will become even smaller and his will become even bigger still. But I know the company he keeps. I know the God who protects him and walks with him, holding his right hand guarding and guiding his footsteps until they reach Him. I know how good, gracious, wise and loving He truly is towards those who love him and place their trust in him. So I’ll continually discipline myself against fear and clinging to false senses of security. I’ll continue to realign my thoughts with his truth, and pray for the strength to walk in His way and to face whatever he has ordained and allowed to enter into my life and in the lives of those I love.
Many are the woes of the wicked, but the LORD’s unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in him. – Psalms 32:10
