{"id":11301,"date":"2017-07-28T00:10:22","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T07:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lccredding.com\/lcc\/?p=11301"},"modified":"2017-07-28T00:10:22","modified_gmt":"2017-07-28T07:10:22","slug":"july-28-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/2017\/07\/28\/july-28-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"July 28, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cHave you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable.\u201d<\/em> Isaiah 40:28<\/span><\/p>\n

Bewildering Choices<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Outside our office, a mother duck has decided that the low bush near our entry door is a good place to sit on her eggs. This entry is well-trafficked, so we wonder why she thought it was a good spot for nesting. Doesn\u2019t she realize there is a pond just two blocks away, complete with reeds to hide in, ample bugs for dinner, and cool, open waters to float upon? We can only assume she does not know.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A similar thought presented itself in a different setting. My husband and I were visiting a desert location, and as we drove along the sandy streets, we saw the same view everywhere we looked: flat, hot, treeless sand dotted with oddly misshapen Joshua trees that seemed to have been haphazardly tossed into the setting without purpose. (They certainly didn\u2019t provide any shade\u2014even for a lizard.) And yet, someone had parked a single-wide mobile home in the middle of that featureless landscape. I wondered what would make a person look at this and say, \u2018This looks like a good spot,\u2019 and put their home there? I had an urge to knock on their door and say, \u201cDon\u2019t you know that there are beautiful places to live?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I know, I hear you stating the obvious: There\u2019s no accounting for taste. Some people really do like the desert.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But a duck having a taste for a well-trafficked nesting spot, and a family having a taste for the dry, hot, windblown, sandy, rattlesnake-infested desert, makes me wonder if they have not known, have not heard, that there is something better.<\/span><\/p>\n

Home choices may be individualized, but what truly bewilders me is when we \u201chave a taste\u201d for anything less than a full-on, totally immersed, all-out relationship with our heavenly Father. We settle for Sunday worship and prayers only. We do not desire (and thus do not experience) the \u201cmore\u201d of God\u2014the abundance, the filling, the satisfaction. We don\u2019t expect more beauty or joy in our lives. We don\u2019t look for a fresh revelation. We don\u2019t ask for enlarged dreams or hearts or love. We don\u2019t expect height and depth and width in our experience with Him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Haven\u2019t we heard there is more? Don\u2019t we know God is bigger?<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh my friends, God is so much more than any of us has seen or heard or known or thought\u2014even for those who have walked with Him a long time. Let\u2019s ask Him to surprise us with newness of life. Let\u2019s be open to all He longs to give. Let\u2019s be so immersed in Him that we never desire anything less.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cLord, You long to show us what is better than the things we settle for. We are open to You. Amen.\u201d<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHave you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p92wjD-2Wh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lccredding.org\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}