Last night as I was alone in the car, I had one of those random thoughts. God, I don't know how people who physically have nothing, and have to scrounge everyday just to find enough food to survive, how they can praise you. How could I praise a father/BFF who has chosen to allow my Christian sisters and brothers to bask in wealth, while I have to scrounge for food and shelter, watching those around me succumb to disease unnecessarily, even losing family members due to conditions of poverty?
This has troubled me because it makes me think that I don't have what it takes to praise God through thick and thin. And with the same breath, I beg God that I really don't want to be tested to find out.
First of all, I don't like to be uncomfortable and secondly, I'm afraid I wouldn't pass and that I would spend the rest of my earthly life not pleasing God with my life. I want to end well. Maybe that's too prideful, it's all about me? I guess if it would further God's plan, I should be willing, but I'm still scared I wouldn't pass the test.
And in true-God fashion, the entry in Jesus Calling from Sarah Young today has this statement to me (I'm sure it was added just for my eyes this morning), "Your sense of security must not rest in your possessions or in things going your way. I [God] am training you to depend on Me alone, finding fulfillment in My Presence." She ends with this verse from Psalm 27:4, "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple."
I sense from David's words is that I need to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and not my surroundings, and to always seek Him. This is hard, I feel I have so much beauty around me, leaves changing colors on a piece of land we call ours (but it's really God's), a comfortable home with heat and air, and enough stuff to make me think I need to give most of it away. It's too much to dust, clean and store. Life would be simpler without a lot of this stuff, but where is that line? I guess I need to always seek God as I buy, dust, clean and store.
If I gaze on His beauty, and seek Him, my surroundings may start to diminish into the background as I focus on Him.