Daily Journal: 27 February

Audio Version

What Do You Carry?

What do you carry that’s good? What do you carry that God wants you to rise into?

Life can sometimes feel like it’s all about fears and failures and enduring and survival. But life has its seasons.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 (MEV)

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven

Life is also about rising and knowing and rejoicing and owning. Fears should lead to faith. Failures should lead to overcoming. Enduring should lead to joy. Survival should lead to flourishing.

Exodus 18 is a beautiful chapter about the relationships around Moses. We can read between the lines how he and his family were having internal struggles because of the pressures Moses had been carrying for some time and it had become too much for him. He sent his wife and sons back to her father. But her father stepped in, brought them back with him to Moses and they sat together over the next day and talked. It’s an insightful chapter about the toll things were taking on Moses. Even the things God was calling Moses to. His father-in-law gave him counsel and Moses listened.

Exodus 18:23 (NIV)

If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will go home satisfied.”

Life is about taking responsibility for things the Lord wants us to carry, plant, tend, nurture and bring to fruition. But He doesn’t expect us to burn ourselves out. For then, what good are we to our family, or to the work He wants us to do?

There is always an ebb and a flow to our maturing and flourishing. This chapter teaches us how God expects us to look after our family first. And it teaches us that God brings others around us, who believe, and who believe in God’s plan for us. These people are planted for our good, who will help and advise, admonish and encourage, when we need. But we need to listen.

Do you have people around you whose discernment you trust?

Just like Moses, we can’t always see things clearly. Their discernment is important for our health, our safety, our progression and success.

Ecclesiastes 3:9-14 (The Voice)

What good comes to anyone who works so hard, all to gain a few possessions? I have seen the kinds of tasks God has given each of us to do to keep one busy, and I know God has made everything beautiful for its time. God has also placed in our minds a sense of eternity; we look back on the past and ponder over the future, yet we cannot understand the doings of God. I know there is nothing better for us than to be joyful and to do good throughout our lives; to eat and drink and see the good in all of our hard work is a gift from God. I know everything God does endures for all time. Nothing can be added to it; nothing can be taken away from it. We humans can only stand in awe of all God has done.