Fount of EVERY Blessing!!!!

Recapitulate 

A bondage of spirit 

The declaration, a proclamation

The chains of sorrow, the pains of separation

The burden of broken bones, and broken bodies

The glimmer of hope lost on my own

I know in my flesh

He holds onto me 

He knows my tears he numbers them all to dry them all

He is the “Gift giver” 

He has snatched me up

I know in my body He gives Me His life

The Hope

The Healer

The Comforter

The declaration, a proclamation of peace 

A freedom, a release

“Here I am Lord! Send me! Send me!” Our God NEVER ceases to amaze me. Just when I begin to lament my life not being what I had hoped it would be at 26 years old, God steps in and says, “I will take you on an adventure, I will give you more than you can possibly dream of for yourself.” 

I am presently learning in one of my classes how everything that God gives is gift. It is easy to say that, it is another thing to recognize it and believe it for your life. I am learning that the language we use to talk about our God is so quickly tainted with our own understanding and limiting of God. For so long I have been praying to God; “God! This is what I want my life to look like...” In the meantime God is stepping forth and responding with “Okay Katie, I hear what you are saying, how would you like this (something I never asked for)” My very prayers limit a God who is so much bigger than my petitions! My requests are limited to what I know and see as being what is best for me, where the God who knew the right time and place for everything is the one who gives all that I ask for.  

 While my class is teaching me that God gives good gifts, my work in Chaplaincy is teaching me that sometimes those gifts are not at all what we ask for. Sometimes we do not even know what we are asking for or what we want. There are so many people who ask for healing, but you look at them and wonder; “is healing of body what you really want?” For some, healing of spirit or comfort for their loved ones would offer so much more peace than their own physical healing. Sometimes asking for what we want we miss out on what we really need. For some in hospital beds they honestly just want to rest in peace, meet their maker, (nice little euphemisms for saying that they want to ‘die’) but because they have family so desperately clinging to them, they hold on and pray for healing, even if life would never be the same in their health. 

Having only one good ear myself, I often wonder how traumatic healing must have been for the deaf that Christ restored hearing to. They then had to learn a new way to live, their world was turned upside down. Now the unemployable have no excuse to sit at the side of the road and beg for money. Now they must learn to earn their wages. What type of healing do we really want? What sort of life do we seek? God’s gifts are better. They may not be what we recognize as being needed but he places them upon the table. He gives good gifts! Even sometimes the things we don’t recognize as gifts are gifts. Our trials, our sufferings, the points in our life that shake us to the core and make us wonder “what is it all for?” can be turned to gift when God is the orchestrator and composer of all our life. 

There is communicated to me at times, and I don’t fully know how to express this, but when I think; “Gee, I really wish I had....(fill in the blank)” I feel in my bones and my soul a whisper from God saying; “Yes! Yes! Yes Katie! I will give that to you! I want to give that to you! I want to give you so much more than you could ever ask for. It is yours now! It is all for you, and one day you will have it in full! Because you are MINE, you have all and so much more!” I know! I know that someday I WILL be whole! WE WILL be whole! In a world where wholeness does not mean devastation, we will be changed. Someday all the tears I have cried for lost dreams and wishes will be shown to me and God will say, “You see, they all meant something to me because they meant something to you, and you are MINE. I have held every tear you cried, I have counted them, now I will dry them and wipe them all away.” I am overwhelmed when I think of what love the Father has lavished upon us! The hope he instills, the promises he gives, the gifts he offers. EVERYTHING HE GIVES IS GIFT!!!!! WE HAVE A GREAT, GIVING GOD!!! The only thing I wish that I could ask of him is that I would be able to wrap my arms around him and be held, cradled within his loving arms. Even still his whisper rings true “Yes! Yes! This gift is for YOU!”. This gift is for US! AMEN!   

Psalm 56:8

You number my wanderings;
Put my tears into Your bottle;
Are they not in Your book?

Revelation 21:4
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”