Journey Long

I don't know when I realized this, but somewhere along the way recently I realized that not only am I God's daughter... I am Yahweh's daughter.  What's the difference?  Well, just my own experience of what that means, and the difference has been huge. I've been reading through Kings and Chronicles, and God is pretty fierce in those books.  He is fiercely loyal to his people and fiercely protective against anything that would harm them, including their own sin.  He is a jealous God, who fights for his people when they abandon him, no matter what that means.  Honestly, sometimes it makes my stomach turn, and I don't really have good answers as to why he did some of the things he did.  They seem a bit harsh at times... But one thing is undeniable: He is strong, fierce, protective, loyal.  It's a side of God I don't always think about, and if I do ponder that side I tend to think of it as the God way back in the Old Testament, Yahweh.  Those charact...

If only I had... If only I could... If only I hadn't... The "if onlys" are frequent flyers in my brain.    It makes sense that we often go back to how things could have been if we had done something differently or could in the future.  That is an important process.   Evaluation of the past  and our actions in it  helps us grow , so that we can do things differently in the future.  This is a part of confession to ourselves, to God and to others.  But sometimes this process goes a little sideways...  instead of learning from past mistakes or shortcomings, they become a source of fear, self-hatred and hopelessness.  Why?  Because we begin to believe that our actions have screwed up God's plan.   That's where we go wrong. As I think through the stories in the Bible about how God worked, I don't hear a lot of "if onlys".   From the very beginning, God has made a plan for our sin.  Our mistakes have never taken him ...