joy in God knowing the way that we take

On this rainy morning I am contemplating (again, for the umpteenth time) the way that I am taking. For one, I am taking 20 bags of "painting clothes", Mum's stuff, former bedding and cushions that I thought I might fix up, to the thrift store, mostly for them to use for sending to the city missions where they will be washed and mended. I am grateful for my experience working there to know that it is okay to take this sort of thing to them and know that it will be used somehow. Yesterday I was phoning archive departments to arrange to send family records in various directions, when they are organized - there is an archive of my Dad's papers in the Windsor Public Library, because he was a long time teacher there involved in local history. There is an archive for his father in London, Ontario, because he was a bishop and professor there at the time of his death, as he was in other cities too. There is a museum south of Owen Sound where I can send everything from photos of my mother's father who was a sheriff there at the time of his death, to the letters her brother sent home from the front before he died at Vimy Ridge, to the size 8 taffeta wedding dress her mother wore, the paisley shawl her grandmother brought from Scotland, etc. I enjoy knowing that my creation of another level of order in the basement also yields research for others, and responsible stewardship of the resources that I have in my possession.

These pursuits enhance my trust that God also is stewarding my resources as He sorts and sifts me. I do not understand all that is happening in His timing, what His leading means when I have to tell others that I cannot afford yet, maybe never, to finish the studies He led me into a few years ago, on which I have believed my future career depends. That is what happens when I look around me. But when I look within me I see the growth, the difference in my responses to situations in other ways, the capacities that have grown. I do not see how I could have grown this way if I had not gone through the hard things I have.

Therefore today I embrace the verse of the day in Daily Light:

"He knows the way that I take; when he has tested me I will come forth as gold." Job 23:10

I moved on to Streams in the Desert this morning also and of course found something similar in thrust, this time quoted from Spurgeon:

"See you not, then, that God may take away your comforts and your privileges, to make you the better Christians? ...God knows that soldiers are only to be made in battle; they are not to be grown in peaceful times......Well, Christian, may not this account for it all? Is not thy Lord bringing out thy graces and making them grow? Is He not developing in you the qualities of the soldier by throwing you into the heat of battle, and should you not use every appliance to come off conqueror?

I embrace the way that I am taking, and take joy that He knows it, and will use it to lead me into all that He has for me, when He has made me fit for those plans.