There is just something about girlfriends. Especially the ones that have known you through thick and thin. The ones you have known in your youth and grown old with. I have a little group of women that I started a bible study with many years ago. We met weekly in my home to go through the study of Esther by Chuck Swindoll. When it was done we kept meeting, kept doing studies, kept praying together. I believe we all had one child when we started but our broods have all grown and we have loved up each new baby that came to visit us. But our group isn't about our children, it is about us. About loving and encouraging one another, listening to each other, sharing our hearts.
We haven't met weekly for several years now, our lives caught up to us and our calendars filled up with kids sports schedules, church meetings and family activities. We tried daytime as our kids got older but we keep having new babies and combined with part time work schedules and daytime church activities that hasn't been much more successful. Yet, we still find time occasionally. We negotiate though the business of our lives and find a date to come together and share our lives.
These are the women in my life that I know will be standing at my side no matter what path my life takes. They will cheer for me when I succeed and they will weep with me when there is loss. No matter where life takes each of us we are sisters in Christ, united as one. They are my ya-ya sisters.
In the past week 2 of these women both learned that their husbands will be unemployed in the new year. In this economy it is a scary place to be. God immediately opened a date on all our calendars for us to sit together, share and pray.
I thought of a scripture I had been sitting in lately and shared it with them.
Isaiah 43:18-19 "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."
No need to dwell on the past, on what has been lost. God is doing a new thing. Don't you love how there is an exclamation point at the end of that. New thing! So exciting! Do you not perceive it? Like God is confused. "what you don't see that? look around!" God is already doing the new thing. He is already preparing them for the next job; preparing the next job for them. And the reminder that God works in any circumstances. He makes a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland and he will make a way through whatever circumstances you are in today.
Our family has been weathering a difficult financial year yet I am continually amazed to see God working things out providing for us exactly what we need. A couple days after having to pay for a large repair to the plow truck I signed 2 new contracts which paid for those repairs. That wasn't coincidence, that was God working. From the "Experiencing God" bible study it says, "God is working all around you." The study encourages you to look around, see what God is doing and go join Him in His work.
As I have stopped focusing inward on my needs and started looking around I am amazed at how often I see God working. I am also amazed by the other thing I see, other people in need. People with more need than me. I am not alone. And just as I see God taking care of me I know God will take care of all His children in need.
So rather than worry about my girlfriends, wringing my hands, or comparing my trials with theirs, I am expectantly looking to see what God will do in their lives and how He will "make a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."
He is working right now. Do you not perceive it?
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