Its just a bit of pain

This post will be short and maybe a little incoherent. I experiencing as much pain as I think you can without passing out from the pain. I am drowning in my own sense of self pity and wondering whether I am a complete whoos for complaining so much about a jaw ache. It was supposed to be a straightforward extraction so I agreed to let a student dentist take it out. In the end she could not do it and the doctor took over because in order to get it out they had to drill round it to prise it out of the jaw so I am missing a bit of my bottom jaw. But I am so aware that somewhere in Africa today mothers have watched their children die from starvation. There are Christians in prison in places like North Korea who have been tortured today. I will probably go to the doctors in the morning if it still hurts and get some more powerful pain control and in a few days I will only feel a bit sore. It really wasn't that bad a day.

Update on Seasons

Wow - I was visiting some dear friends at the weekend and the husband had just come back from spending time on retreat in Moravian Falls. They prayed for me and the husband saw a vision of me sitting in a restuarant called "the four seasons" and God told him "he has been seeking understanding of the seasons but tell him all the seasons are at once to me and I can move him from one to the other in any sequence that I like". Phew ! that was a surprise to me because my friend knew nothing about my blog or what the winter means to me.

I didn't feel it was a rebuke from God to say stop thinking about this rather I think it was a message about how God can work without regard to our circumstances. That is the amazing thing with God you can be in circumstances of need that should cause you to feel like you were in darkest winter but in fact you can experience the sunny warmth of his love in the midst of the darkest circumstances. King David understood this secret. I love Psalm 42 where he writes in verse 5-6:

5 Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and 6 my God.

My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember you from the land of the Jordan, the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.

He knew how to praise God and lift his own soul. In verse 8 of Psalm 42 you read :

By day the LORD directs his love, at night his song is with me—

I love the way he could praise his way out of Winter into Spring and find new hope even though his circumstances had not changed.

There is one time in David's life where he demonstrates this ability in a real life situation. He was living in exile in a city called Ziklag and some raiders ransacked the city and stole his men's wives and children. They were so distressed that they were talking about killing their leader. It says in 1 Samuel 30 v. 6 "But David found strength in the Lord his God". It doesn't say how he did it but I have a hunch it involved some singing. Any way he lifted his spirits and found the strength to chase after the raiders and get all their women and children back.

I so want to be someone who knows how to do that, to lift my own spirit so I can keep going by strengthening myself in the Lord. The race belongs not to the swift but to the persistant one who keeps going. The one who can find springtime in the midst of winter.