Day’s Verse:
“If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us[a] from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
Daniel 3:17-18

And by “pool” I mean large plastic bin containing three inches of water. Yes. Well, this is what we do on hot sunny days, apparently: sit in warm water wearing all our clothes playing with the purple ball.

Oh, to be a baby. Sometimes of late I’ve wanted to hide from my own life – from the oceans of sorrow, loss, and emotional anguish washing through right now. The wave feels awfully high, tsunami-high, and it’s hard to imagine coming through unscathed.

But then unscathed doesn’t shape us as human beings, does it? God uses these times, when we’re overwhelmed with grief, or with anything that’s just too much for one person to hold, to help us grow into wiser, more mature, and more loving people. I don’t want to have lost two people close to me in the last couple months, and I don’t want my dear friend to leave the Pacific Northwest, and I don’t want Carmel to alarmingly show her age. But I have to believe that even through these times, when I want to hide from my own life, God is molding me into something more beautiful and Christlike. I have to trust. If I knew for sure, well, then that wouldn’t be faith, would it? That would be certainty. And I sure don’t have a whole lot of that floating around these days.