The following devotion was written by Barbara Davidson for the women of her church. It is so beautiful and thought provoking I just had to post it here. Hope you enjoy it, and thanks Barbara, for providing it. “Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.” Psalm 90:14
The Grocery Store Day: When we returned from Korea, after having spent two years on the mission field, I entered a grocery store and stood there stunned. There were fresh strawberries in February, aisles stocked with undented cans, bags of flour unpunctured by rats, a ga-zillion choices of cereals, pastas, ice cream, fish, breads, and chicken packaged neatly, without the heads and necks attached. Ah, how easy to be filled with thanks—totally satisfied with God’s unfailing love pouring over me.
The Pickle Relish Day: A decade later, we moved, and my new kitchen had lovely wooden floors. I wondered how I was going to keep the grooves between the boards clean, but didn’t give it much thought until the morning I hurriedly opened the frig and the bar holding the items on the door shelf broke, hurdling a full jar of pickle relish everywhere. Broken glass, pickles, and juice filled every crevice. Did I sing for joy? It was tough, but after the initial horror, as I spent hours cleaning up, He helped me focus on His unfailing love. I thanked Him for the house, the floor, my knees, my eyes that could see the shards of glass, the time that morning to clean it, and on and on.
The Cancer Day: And then there was the day I impatiently waited on the exam table for the doctor. All he had to do was remove the bandage from what I had thought was a “spot” removal. Cancer had never invaded our world, so I didn’t know that what had occurred a week before was a lumpectomy followed by a biopsy. The words “breast cancer” came out like a baseball bat slug to the head. It was a stage 3, whole-ball-of-wax cancer which journeyed me through chemos, a failed bone marrow transplant, 136 blood/platelet transfusions, and a long walk “through the valley of the shadow of death.”
Surely the verse doesn’t mean that we sing for joy and are glad for these days too?
We all experience these three different days. Each begins with a morning in which the Lord wants to satisfy us. It’s easy to be satisfied on the mornings of lovely grocery store days—when we’re experiencing good health, happy children, money to pay the bills, joyful friendships, the amazing blessings of getting to live in the United States. It gets rougher when the pickle relish and broken glass cover the kitchen floor—when we’re stuck in traffic, the computer crashes, the toddler completely misses the potty, we get lost and we’re late to the job interview, the wallet is stolen. And then there are the cancer days—when there’s news of Dad’s death, your husband says he wants a divorce, your child chooses to be a prodigal, the World Trade Center is decimated.
A rock strong truth I discovered during my cancer walk is succinctly stated on page 117 in Kay Arthur’s As Silver Refined. “When the pain is deepest and sharpest—it becomes a testing and proving ground both for our belief in the sovereignty of God and for our understanding of His heart. The single most powerful, liberating, peace-giving truth I’ve every learned in God’s Word is the fact that He is sovereign. Resting in the sovereignty of God has held me through all the trials, all the pain—everything. God is in control, and therefore in everything I can give thanks—not because of the situation but because of the One who directs and rules over it.”
How He longs to satisfy us every morning—on grocery store days, pickle relish days, and cancer days-- with His unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
Barbara Davidson
