In the beginning...

How's your summer going so far?  I'm having a hard time believing it's already July!  I feel like I crammed a lot of activity into the month of June and there's still a lot more to be crammed in before school starts. 

Recently we returned home from a trip to a house that smelled like skunk and a car that wouldn't start.  One of our dachshunds, Cordie, was sprayed just before we left for our road trip--as in at 5am, 30 minutes before our car was to hit the road.  We cleaned her and the house the best we could before we left.  God bless our dog sitter because I don't know what you know about skunk smell but it does not go down without a fight.  We're now two weeks out from the incident and I still catch faint whiffs of it throughout the house.

So there was that.  And then the car that wouldn't start and the cracked windshield on another vehicle that had to be replaced and a bunch of home projects I'm trying to catch up on and finish plus jobs and July 4 holidays and birthdays to plan, etc., etc., etc.  It's not that I'm complaining about all of this--these are the busy things that make up life right now and they each have their place, challenges or not.  (Well, maybe the skunk.  I'm definitely complaining about the skunk.)  I believe God meets us where we are.  I believe He's as much a part of the laundry in my house as He is worship on Sunday morning. 

But darned if I've not completely lost sight of that.

Do you ever have those moments, when you feel so very far away from God and so very close to chaos?  Sometimes I write the word "peace" on my hand when I'm feeling like I need a little extra help remembering it.  I did that the other day.  Then I mopped and wiped up skunk smell for 10 hours and it got washed off. 
 
So this morning I tried a different approach.  I began at the beginning. 

I took my Bible outside and read Genesis 1.  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep.  And in that darkness, over that formless, deep, empty space the Spirit of God hovered, and His voice spoke, and light appeared. 

Can you imagine that?  God's voice?  In the dark, in the deep, in the emptiness comes the spirit of something so powerful that the only response to such an instrument is creation??

The light is separated from darkness creating day and night.  The heavens make way from the waters and the waters make way for land.  The seas and skies and earth are filled with creatures and plants and trees.  The sun and moon and stars are set upon the heavens so that seasons may come and time set in motion.  And man.  Created in His image, set apart and above, male and female, to multiply and govern and tend. 

Back to the beginning.  To the assurance that I am His.  That this world around me, the wind moving through the trees, the heat radiating off the ground, the day that turns to night and back into morning...it belongs to Him.  At the beginning of each day there will always be this, and always this when I lay my head down to rest at night. 

So that's my challenge to you.  In case you're having one of those days/weeks/months/years :) ...take your Bible outside and start at the beginning.  Where all that's required is God's voice and the rest just falls into place.

XOXO...Kelly