Things are never going to go smoothly 100% of the time because turbulence is part of the journey and the sooner we accept that the sooner we can get to being still and giving God the room to get us through it. I don’t know if it’s growing older or just becoming more pliable from hitting the same snags a few times but lately I find myself ready to go despite the adversity in my way.

I don’t pretend everything is great, but I accept that I can’t fix it all on my own and this allows me to do the small part that I can fix every day. From the point I consciously accepted what I was made to do and started doing it I’ve never felt more alive but I’ve also never had to deal with so many lessons in this short a space of time. If I was a hard rock before, I am certainly being polished into a diamond now and when I’m finally glinting in the sunlight you may think I’m just trying to stun you for no reason but diamonds were never polished to remain hidden.

Don’t compromise

My message today is for someone who’s in the furnace right now. You are a diamond in the making so do not despise the day of humble beginnings. It is a strange conspiracy that when the heat intensifies everywhere you look there is a refreshing fountain of compromise ready to soothe your burning soul but don’t go for it. It’s a trap to keep you thirsty, lonely and miserable stay in that furnace and trust the process.

Trust God

Don’t ask so many questions you don’t always need to know why because even if you did it’s not like you could do anything in your small capacity to change it. This is about as easy as sifting through ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife or sitting in a salt sauna with grazed skin. That’s just my fancy way of saying it’s extremely ironic and frustrating and painfully difficult sometimes but God is not man that He should lie and He is certainly not blind to our persistent discomfort in being moulded.

The choice is yours whether you want to be like self-rising flour and do it on your own strength or whether you want to be seasoned for patience, garnished with grace and presented before your enemies sporting that unmistakable aroma of a slow baked masterpiece. There are those who are faster and smarter than you. Some have even gone way ahead of you despite your desperate attempts to catch up but one thing we must understand is that God doesn’t run out of opportunities to boost the stragglers. Yes the ones that are often at the base of all the family jokes, the dreamers who are cast away because they see what others do not and the fighters whose battle scars are like a second skin because they are so many.

Peace BE still

We may never get used to the storms but many of them have come and gone and many will come to go and leave us to pick up the pieces. The point isn’t about how many storms we’ve had to weather it’s about how much stronger and wiser we are now that the storm has passed. I watched this motivational video where Will Smith was describing how he and some friends decided to go sky diving.

At first it was a great idea among friends and then by the time it was the night before reality struck and fear began to suggest all the ways this one simple thing could go horribly wrong. Then the day came and even breakfast felt like a health hazard but something happens on the other side of the aircraft doors when you are free falling and just for a second your wings are spread out in perfect peace as the wind carries you over the beautiful earth. All the best things that are ever going to happen in our lives are going to happen on the other side of our fears.

So peace is found in the acceptance of the Source who is greater and better able than our limited selves to get us exactly where we need to go and on time too. The experience taught Will that it’s unnecessary to carry the discomfort of anxiety especially because when you finally get to the other side it dissipates for the excitement of the greater experiences. When you finally cross over you’ll realise that the fear that held you at the gate called “Beautiful” begging for scraps was just a mean place holder an unnecessary bit of carry-on luggage in the space where something more constructive could have been.

My prayer for today is that we are reminded of the true nature of our Spirit, not one of fear but of a sound mind, one of bold determination to do sustainable good in this lifetime. Amen