There is a loneliness about this place … this place of my choosing. Surrounded by the things of life, I have suddenly come face to face with the solitariness of life. One person, one life, one place, one God, one moment in time-solitary, alone, yet not alone.

God has chosen his way of filling this place and this space in my life with the “ordinariness” of life. How long has it been since I lost the sense of the wondrous, magnificent works of God? How long has it been since I have been excited about what God is doing before ray very eyes? How long has it been since God became ordinary?

How strange that the sun should become ordinary to me, that clouds, and rain, and snow, and sunshine have become common, pedestrian fare.

How strange that God should choose to speak through naked branches having neither bud nor bloom, that God should choose to utter sounds through rivers and streams frozen in place, in icicles glittering
promises of still more winter, still more discontent.

Or that God should choose to brave speaking through the commonplace roads of my existence and has made them icy, slippery, impassable, treacherous … sending me off in unknown directions, sliding, sometimes falling, meeting new hurt-in peculiar places. How strange of God to speak through the ordinariness of life. How strange.

I do not know  why I am here. I do not know what I am to do here. More to the point, I do not know how I got to this place, which is so far from where I started out, so far from the destination to which I was determined to go. I only know that I must follow that Voice, the Voice that speaks in tones that I am familiar with, tones that I have so often failed to listen to and failed often to understand or obey.

Could it be that I am in this lonely place, this solitary space, to wait again for the Empowering Presence?… to wait again for the Call that I alone am burdened to hear? … to wait again for that purifying, energizing, frightening fire that burns within?

I need to feel it again. I need to know that God’s fire is my fire. I desperately need to know that my loneliness is not permanent and that my solitariness is filled with the awesome purposefulness of God.

This moment, this hour, this time is not mine, it belongs to God. I am now wholly alone, wholly vulnerable, wholly available. Come, Holy Spirit, with wind and fire. Let your breath blow anew in my life. Penetrate my soul and my personality with the power of your touch. Broken, humbled, frightened, unsure of today and tomorrow … only sure that you are there. Come, Holy Spirit, use me now! Let the fire burn!

Sometimes your biggest weakness can become your biggest strength. Take, for example, the story of one 10-year-old boy who decided to study judo despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in a devastating car accident.

The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master. The boy was doing well, so he couldn’t understand why, after three months of training, the master had taught him only one move.

“Sensei,” the boy finally said, “shouldn’t I be learning more moves?”

“This is the only move you know, but this is the only move you’ll ever need to know,” the sensei replied.

Not quite understanding, but believing in his teacher, the boy kept training.

Several months later, the sensei took the boy to his first tournament. Surprising himself, the boy easily won his first two matches. The third match proved to be more difficult, but after some time, his opponent became impatient and charged; the boy deftly used his one move to win the match. Still amazed by his success, the boy was now in the finals.

This time, his opponent was bigger, stronger, and more experienced. For a while, the boy appeared to be overmatched. Concerned that the boy might get hurt, the referee called a time-out. He was about to stop the match when the sensei intervened.

“No,” the sensei insisted, “Let him continue.”

Soon after the match resumed, his opponent made a critical mistake: he dropped his guard. Instantly, the boy used his move to pin him. The boy had won the match and the tournament. He was the champion.

On the way home, the boy and sensei reviewed every move in each and every match. Then the boy summoned the courage to ask what was really on his mind.

“Sensei, how did I win the tournament with only one move?”

“You won for two reasons,” the sensei answered. “First, you’ve almost mastered one of the most difficult throws in all of judo. Second, the only known defense for that move is for your opponent to grab your left arm.”

The boy’s biggest weakness had become his biggest strength.

A man was sleeping at night in his cabin when suddenly his room was filled with light and the Savior appeared. The Lord told the man he had work for him to do, and showed him a large rock in front of his cabin. The Lord explained that the man was to push against the rock with all his might.

This the man did, day after day. For many years he toiled from sun up to sun down, his shoulders set squarely against the cold, massive surface of the unmoving rock, pushing with all his might.

Each night the man returned to his cabin sore, and worn out, feeling that his whole day had been spent in vain. Seeing that the man was showing signs of discouragement, Satan decided to enter the picture by placing thoughts into the man’s mind. “You have been pushing this rock for a long time, and it hasn’t budged. Why kill yourself over this? You are never going to movie it.” Thus giving the man the impression that the task was impossible and that he was a failure. Over time, these thoughts discouraged and disheartened the man – “why kill myself over this?” he thought. ‘I’ll just put in my time, giving just the minimum effort and that will be good enough.”

And that he planned to do until one day he decided to make it a matter of prayer and take his troubled thoughts to the Lord. “Lord,” he said, “I have labored long and hard in your service, putting all my strength to do that which you have asked. Yet, after all this time, I have not even budged this rock by half a millimeter. What is wrong? Why am I failing?!”

The Lord responded compassionately, “My friend, when I asked you to serve me and you accepted, I told you that your task was to
push against the rock with all your strength, which you have done. Never once did I mention to you that I expected you to move it. Your task was to push. And now you come to me, with your strength spent, thinking that you have failed. But, is that really so? Look at yourself. Your arms are strong and muscled, your back sinewed and brown, your hands are callused from constant pressure, and your legs have become massive and hard. Through opposition you have grown much and your abilities now surpass that which you used to have. Yet you haven’t moved the rock. But your calling was to be obedient and to push and to exercise your faith and trust in My wisdom. This you have done. I, my friend, will now move the rock.”

At times when we hear a word from God, we tend to use our own intellect to decipher what He wants, when actually what God wants is just simple obedience and faith in Him…. . By all means, exercise the faith that moves mountains, but remember it is still God who moves the mountains.