I return from travels late last night, and I wake up to piles of laundry rising like the Rockies, suitcases scattered, and mail piled on the kitchen table. What a way to begin the New Year! I settle into the familiar rocking chair with my cup of coffee and Bible, ready to start the new journal of a brand new year. I know I’m a day late, and I feel the frustration rising that this year isn’t going well so far.
But at least I can start my beautiful new journal.
But I realize that I somehow forgot to buy my new journal for 2017. How can this be? I begin a new journal every new year. I sit in the chair in a disaster of a house with sniffles and a head cold beginning—and no beautiful new journal–and I think about how 2017 might just usher in a year of less-than-perfect conditions.
Oh, Jesus. What’s going to happen this year? I pray and try to find rest in this mess.
And the much needed conviction comes:
When conditions aren’t perfect, He is perfect.
The sentence is a reminder and a rebuke to my very organized self who only wants perfect conditions, perfect days that go according to plan, perfect meals, and even perfect sentences for manuscripts. And in this fantasy, nobody gets sick, nobody gets hurt, and nobody suffers. Yup, that’s the plan, God.
I write in the back pages of the old journal (all wrong!!) God’s words to me: When conditions aren’t perfect, He is perfect. Jesus is perfect! He’s always perfect! I trust in Him and not my conditions.
I welcome 2017 and the imperfect conditions that drive me to a perfect Savior. Amen!