Update, they let me out of the hospital today and I am home, hopefully healed. No surgery, thank God!

Being in the hospital overnight is always an exhausting experience, but there are opportunities to share nuggets of truth, to encourage someone and pass on one of my books. God always has multiple purposes in what He does or allows.

My natural inclination is to have what is comfortable and convenient. But God is more interested in giving us challenges for growth, chances to witness and conditions conducive spread of the gospel. When we focus on our own discomfort and disappointment, our discouragement, we miss seeing the big picture. As someone said, the only way we can get that bigger picture is through revelation, which means the Word. “My ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than yours.

Personally I find it hard not to focus on the little picture, just one tree in the forest, so to speak, rather than seeing whole sweeping panorama of the forest and beyond. To put it another way, I prefer to be distracted by my pain rather than the possibilities. But God is patient and persistent in leading us onward and upward, further into His Kingdom, on to greater vistas of His greatness, glory and goodness.

As it says in Psalm 34, “Fear the Lord, you his saints for there is no lack for those who fear Him.” Fearing God means trusting Him, caring more of what He thinks than of what I or others think. It is ever a challenge to be looking up rather than down. May we all practice living in the revelation of God, seeing the whole forest and following Him wherever He leads.