Monday, January 6, 2014

EACH NEW MORNING HAS NO CLOUD


I’m going to stay at this until I’m done”, I promised myself, “. . . even if it takes me until 2 tomorrow morning!” True to my own heart, I did get it done! However, in the morning, I reviewed the completed project only to find two or three glaring mistakes! I groaned, “If I didn’t have the energy to complete the task, why was I given the energy to destroy it!” I knew better than complain to God, but didn’t know how to deal with my own failure, thus it ended up in a complaint anyway! Moses had this problem when he was called to set God’s people free from Egyptian bondage. (Exodus 4:10-11)

He had a “night” of forty years after the murder of an Egyptian. When morning came, it was filled with the clouds of doubt!

Quoting Lucy Maud Montgomery in “Anne of Avonlea”, the second story in the ever-popular “Anne of Green Gables” series, Russ Lawson of Daily Encourager writes, “Every day is brand new, with no mistakes.” 1

The book begins, “Anne is . . . ready to begin a new life teaching in her old school. She’s as feisty as ever and is fiercely determined to inspire young hearts with her own ambitions. But some of her pupils are as boisterous and high-spirited as Anne, and so life in her Avonlea classroom becomes a lesson in discovery and adventure.”

Insights like this in life lurk in surprising places!


I have repeatedly been delighted and surprised that such “conventional wisdom” was actually hidden in the Bible long before this inspirational statement. Delighting in God’s Word brings such things to my heart.


Here are some places I have seen it,

  1. God’s compassions are “ . . . new every morning: great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:23 NKJV)
  2. His answer is heard in the morning . . . “Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord.” (Psalms 5:3 NLT)
  3. Each morning I bring my requests to you and wait expectantly.” (Psalms 5:3 NLT)
  4. It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow.” (1 Corinthians 3:7 NLT)
  5. He is the One that provides seed, increases resources, then brings the harvest. “For God is the one who provides seed for the farmer and then bread to eat. In the same way, he will provide and increase your resources and then produce a great harvest of generosity in you.” (2 Corinthians 9:10 NLT)
  6. The morning is the product or fruit of the night before . . . the reason we are warned not to go to sleep with an angry heart. The morning represents the fruit of the previous night’s heart exercise. (Psalm 4:4) (Ephesians 4:26) Countless people have advised, “Why don’t you sleep on it?”
  7. The activities of a given day have an affect on the next. Whether we like it or not, the heart of any given day is the material God uses to create the new one. The created order itself is always perfect, even though it is dealing with “less than perfect” investments. I find it dismaying at times that the brand new cells of my body carry only the tendencies of the old. Many years ago I learned to say, “I have 220 lbs of new cells, but they all think that they’ve got to be fat like their predecessors!”
  8. The very name of the morning, is “Day”, (Genesis 1:5) This is repeated for each created day, It starts with the “heart” for the coming “day”, calling it “Evening”. The “fruit” of one’s heart is a special gift to use for each new day! (A concept God caused me to reap many years ago in what today is known as “IBLP.org”)
  9. Descriptive names are given to both sad and joyful experiences. Sad experiences are those that express disappointments, and Joyful experiences are those that express God’s blessing.
You may be saying, “But you have said nothing about a morning’s ‘lack of clouds’ . . . new days ‘do’ have clouds! In fact I’ve just experienced the worst possible morning ever!” The answer is rather basic: “God’s Created Order leaves us with an aching heart. But given the understanding of the Great Redemption Story it will equal ‘no clouds’ in each new day”.

Begin the day in the evening. Let your empty heart repeat the effective medicine of scripture that you keep thinking of as you go to sleep. Cry for God’s heart to be revealed to you in the morning. Frustration at night will only cloud the morning.

Embrace the day in the morning, thanking God for what appears to be a cloud! It is God who creates and sustains us. He knows we will fail. His laws are changeless. He wants to show us that clouds do not destroy the sun. The clouds caused by determination alone, mercifully protect us from ourselves until we are ready for the sun in all its glory, or we wouldn't even try! (Psalm 19:5) (2 Corinthians 12:7)