Did We Miss the Timing?

-Polly Erb

I always like to pay attention to the change of seasons in the natural. I'm always amazed in the spring when you hear the geese coming -in my mind they come way too early. There's usually still snow on the ground, and I'm thinking, "It's not spring yet. Why are you showing up?"

And I see them sort of gathered around the bodies of water that they would normally nest around, and they're frozen still, and they're kind of standing around on the edge or standing on the ice, and I think, "Did they get it right?" I always imagine them talking to each other, "Did we get this right? Did we miss the timing?"

Sometimes God is shifting seasons in our lives. He's put some things in our hearts to do, or given us a sense of change that's coming. And we can kind of be like the geese that show up at the sloughs and the ponds and the ice is still frozen -that's the way it is with us and God.

We can respond to what He's telling us to do in our hearts. And yet in the natural, it doesn't look right. It doesn't look like things are lining up. The pond is still frozen and we can't go swimming. I want to encourage you today that if God has been speaking to you about change or a shift in season, don't be disheartened just because it doesn't look like anything's changed in the natural.

If you're paying attention during the spring, the grass is still brown and it's still cold at night, and yet just ever so slowly, things start to change and shift until one day suddenly the green is so vivid. It's almost too green. We've gotten so used to the white and the brown.

Be encouraged that God is on the move. Pay attention to His promptings and His words to you, even though in the natural it might not look like anything's happening.

Father, thank you for the privilege of being able to gather together. Thank you for bringing change and shift in our lives and leading us into new territories, into your promises for us. Cause our hearts to be filled with faith and expectancy where there's been disappointments. Father, we pray that there would be fresh expectancy and fresh hope, in Jesus name.