Categories: uncategorized
Date: 15 August 2005 18:29:05
I'VE been thinking a lot about where my security lies, and I reckon I could almost swap "Where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also," with "Where you store up things to make yourself feel safe, there shall your heart be also."
The office is going through more change than I think it ever has, and it is having a bizarre effect. Being unsettled, with the status we have built up over years threatening to be stripped from us, makes us quicker to lash out at each other. We've all (myself included) taken so much of our security from who this job makes us, and how much it pays - and with that looking increasingly uncertain, the facade of civilisation and friendliness is beginning to look a little chipped around the edges.
I'm not impressed by my own conduct here. With things so difficult, my own position was the first I thought of, even though I'm in a far better place than most here. I've not been the support, for instance, that I could have been to certain colleagues, because I have been far to obsessed with myself. It feels like a "witnessing opportunity" (gosh, how I hate that phrase) passed up - because I could have been that wonderful strong Christian who can ride the political storms in an office because her life is "hid with Christ in God" - and therefore such things are irrelevant.
But I'm not. I'm scared, and tossed about, and I hate it. On the bright side, though,it's teaching me plenty about dependence, and about how the Israelites in the desert must have felt when god kept providing them with that manna that they couldn't save for the next day. This is my "manna time" - and I feel like I'm existing hand to mouth with no control over my own fate.
God isn't giving me any quick answers - but I'm learning to trust him in the dark, I hope ( it feels like one step forward, and two steps back sometimes - but hopefully I'll get there in the end). I'm finding Psalm 23 a great help.The words "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall lack nothing" have special relevance when you're this confused. Also "God is our strength and refuge, a very present help in trouble, and therefore we shall not fear, though the earth should change".
I'm so very far from being nomadic, and I cope with change badly. I want to acquire material things when everything else is unsure (hence the Ebay obsession?). I need constant reassurance that my own position is safe. I hate the intrigue, the politics, the stories all over the other newspapers. But I'm beginning to understand why God did what He did to the Israelites. And I think I understand a bit about why this is happening to me. I just wish I was handling it better, Lord. After all we weren't called to be a light in the light times, but the dark ones.