“Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulfillment. But I am not alone.” Elie Wiesel
“Give yourself a gift of five minutes of contemplation in awe of everything you see around you. Go outside and turn your attention to the many miracles around you. This five-minute-a-day regimen of appreciation and gratitude will help you to focus your life in awe.” Wayne Dyer
So many times in my life I have been confronted with a painful situation and wished I could run away and hide. When I was a boy struggling with same sex attraction, I wanted to be invisible. When I was called names and bullied, I wanted to be anywhere but in those moments. What do I do to steal away when Parkinson’s consumes me? What do I do to steal away when my once strong voice has been reduced to a weak and frail whimper? There have been more times than I care to admit when I wish God could just suspend time or could give me the ability to time travel to a place of future safety…but our God is the God of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He is the God Who transcends time, stepping in and out of it as He sees fit. He has even been known to stop time!
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about God’s ability to suspend time. In Joshua’s day He caused the universe to stand still. Has anything changed in His ability to do so? I began asking Him to take the small portions of the day when I have brief times to spend with Him and multiply His presence. In other words, in a five minute window of time, refresh and restore as if I had just spent hours in rest or sleep. He is faithful to meet with us in our daily rush and hectic schedules. My song, Steal Away, is meant to be a catalyst to help us get away from it all - even when we can’t physically do so!
Then Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel,
"O sun, stand still at Gibeon,
And O moon in the valley of Aijalon."
So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped,
Until the nation avenged themselves of their enemies.
Is it not written in the book of Jashar? And the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. There was no day like that before it or after it, when the LORD listened to the voice of a man; for the LORD fought for Israel.
Joshua 10:12-14 NASB
What I discovered is that God can meet with us in the middle of nowhere…in the midst of an overwhelming storm…in the midst of a fiery furnace…in the midst of financial ruin…in the midst of unbearable pain…in the midst of unfathomable sorrow…in the midst of the bombardment of the enemy’s lies…in the midst of the most seductive temptation…in the midst of a loud and boisterous crowd…in the middle of feeling utterly and irrevocably alone.
Am I alone in my Parkinson’s? No. God is there with comfort and love.
Alone in the grief of my diagnosis? No. God is there, mourning with me, comforting with His presence.
Alone in my suffering? No. God is there, sharing and bearing the burden with me, giving grace along the way.
Alone in the slow degradation and fading of my mind into the fogginess of Parkinson’s? No. God is literally there holding my hand through the fog, urging me to follow Him and bathing me with the mind of Christ.
My point? With God, time is irrelevant. He is with us in the middle of any circumstance we could possibly imagine…and He can take even a few seconds of our human awareness of time and multiply those few seconds into a day’s worth of rest and refreshment. Just as God caused time to stand still for the children of Israel when faced with the onslaught of their sworn enemy, He can do the same for us. The Deliverer - the God of Israel - is the same Deliverer and God with us. After all, He is Immanuel - God with us.
To everything [there is] a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven…
Ecclesiastes 3:1 NKJV
Let’s allow God to help us make the most of our time. Let’s just practice doing everything we do with the awareness that we are not alone. We can steal away any time. Any place. Let’s steal away today…
Dennis Jernigan
To hear the song, Steal Away, listen to The Dennis Jernigan Podcast on the story behind the song at http://podcast.dennisjernigan.com/e/steal-away-1598366673/
Photo courtesy of https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2016/01/09/13/35/outlook-1130223_1280.jpg