Traveling Light

I can't believe I haven't written anything since January! Life goes on whether your watching, worrying or just hanging in there....

I've rediscovered a book that the pastor at Sugarloaf UMC did a series of sermons on some time back. Maybe 8-9 years ago, it's been a while. The book is titled "Traveling Light" by writer Max Lucado. If you are familiar with Max Lucado don't let that turn you off. He writes some deeply spiritual, flowery stuff that I just can't follow. This is not like that at all. Funny, how many years I've been been going to church and I still view myself as a spiritual babe who's still teething on the vanilla wafer's of God's kingdom and not as a saintly mature lion ripping the meat off the bone of Spiritualness. It doesn't bother me, I just acknowledge it. Thus, I digress, per usual - back to "Traveling Light".

The book is a line by line breakdown of the 23rd Psalm. You know the one that begins "The Lord is my Shepard I shall not want." It takes each sentence and dissects it into a burden God never intended for us to carry therefore we can lay those things down or take them out of our suitcase and "travel lightly" without them thru this life.

Well, the book has just been awesome to get back into again. And this trip thru, I seem to be picking up things I never noticed before. One particular meaningful chapter to me is "Doubt".

My friends and my children say I like to be in control. I think I've mentioned that before. It's a quite subtle need for control. I do a good job of masking it as concern or involvement. Some call it hovering. Some call it being overbearing. I call it what I do.

Hmmmm....Well.

There's been this cloud of undefined uncertainty that has been hanging over me and in my mind for some time so when I was flipping thru "Traveling Light", I thought gee I wonder if there's a chapter on uncertainty, well "Doubt" was the closest chapter I found to it so I began reading.

"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life." is the basis of the "Doubt" chapter.

Not "surely uncertainty will follow me" but goodness and mercy.

Certainly goodness and mercy.

Certainty. Not uncertainty.

Goodness and Mercy.

Well, I read it and read it until one morning I said "UNCERTAINTY get out of the backseat of my car! There's no room for you back there because GOODNESS and MERCY are already there! GO AWAY!!!"

It's actually worked. I truly believe it.

I don't have to haul uncertainty around being weighted down by it like carrying an extra 200 pounds around in my car. Every time I get in the car there's goodness and mercy already there. This spiritual babe needed that and hey learning this and applying it might just have put some mane on the teething lion cub.

"Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of life"....

Of this... I AM CERTAIN! NO DOUBT!

I listen to this song in the car almost every morning. It does me wonders!!! Please consider this post as me whispering into your ear.