MERRY MONDAY BY PARRIS BAILEY-

“Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness” Col.1:11
Everywhere we look we can see how nature renews itself. Recently I took two of my grand-girls for a walk in our river, the Bogue Fayala. I was amazed how the terrain looked so different. We haven’t had a good rain in a few weeks so the water was very shallow exposing logs, islands that I had not seen before. As we walked down the river, suddenly out of nowhere a young fawn went bounding away! Nature was at work all around us. Even our bodies undergo renewal, for example when we sleep we reorganize our energy and prepare ourselves for activity, resting our mind and our bodies. Another important thing happens, our breathing causes the blood to get cleansed, even dreaming helps us to destress from the days activities. We serve an amazing God indeed. Paul knew that our many sided weaknesses would need daily renewing.

Maclaren puts it this way: “Just as there must be a perpetual oxygenation of blood in the lungs, so there must be an uninterrupted renewal of spiritual strength for the highest life. It is demanded by the conditions of our human weakness. It is no less rendered necessary by the nature of the divine strength imparted, which is ever communicating itself, and like the ocean cannot but pour so much of its fulness as can be received into every creek and crack on its shore.There is ‘infinite riches in a narrow room.’ All power means every kind of power, be it bodily or mental, for all variety of circumstances, and, Protean, to take the shape of all exigencies. Most of us are strong only at points, and weak in others. In all human experience there is a vulnerable spot on the heel.”

He goes on to say, “We plainly need an infusion of diviner strength than our own, if that strange marriage of joy and sorrow should take place, and they should at once occupy our hearts. Yet if His strength be ours we shall be strong to submit and acquiesce, strong to look deep enough to see His will as the foundation of all and as ever busy for our good, strong to hope, strong to discern the love at work, strong to trust the Father even when He chastens. And all this will make it possible to have the paradox practically realized in our own experience, ‘As sorrowful yet always rejoicing.’ One has seen potassium burning underwater. Our joy may burn under waves of sorrow. Let us bring our weakness to Jesus Christ and grasp Him as did the sinking Peter. He will breathe His own grace into us, and speak to our feeble and perchance sorrowful hearts, as He had done long before Paul’s words to the Colossians, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee, and my strength is made perfect in weakness.’ ”

So chill out and let Him do His thing in you!