Rev 4:6

I decided to take up a generous offer from my dear, generous friend to stay at her lake house. For a couple days before Christmas, I was up here alone with the Lord. I spent much time writing but I have also relaxed outside under the blue sky communing with Abba and enjoying His creation, including a family of deer.

It’s winter and thus there has not been too much ruckus from boats out on the lake. Yesterday was a bit windy, but this afternoon there was hardly a breeze. It was a very placid place today.

While I sat swinging down on the pier, I watched reflections on the still waters. The blue sky and puffy clouds were clearly and beautifully reflecting on the smooth surface. It reminded me of the “sea of glass” in Revelation 4:6, a perfect picture of peace. Before His throne, His children stand in perfect peace.

“You will keep us in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.” (See Isaiah 26:3-4)

A sole boat sped by. The waves lapped against the shoreline even after the boat was out of sight. The water’s choppiness distorted the image.

Does our choppiness and hurriedness and worry distort the image of God in us? I heard a sermon on the radio on the way up here, saying that we all need to spend more quiet time alone with Abba. Amen to that! We need that time of placidity, just resting in His Presence. For millenia, saints have echoed the same sentiment.

“Stayed upon Jehovah, hearts are truly blessed, finding as He promised, perfect peace and rest” goes the hymn.

Biographies of martyrs that have been handed down to us from the early days of the Church, show that God has given a supernatural strength and peace to His saints even in the faced of horrid deaths. Perhaps the anguish comes before the trial, when we ask God for the courage and faith to do that to which He has called us. I know at times I have anguished and cried out to God for the fortitude to do His will, knowing that my flesh is weak, yet knowing His Spirit is all-sufficient. Jesus Christ had His own time with the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane. When He arose from that time, He went forth in the power of the Spirit to do the Father’s will: to die on the cruel cross for our redemption.

So, I pray you will make time for Him. There in His Presence is all the peace, all the strength and all the joy you’ll ever need in any season. It just takes time.