paths of righteousness

We are preparing to launch a ministry at church, for its third year.  This women's group is so near and dear to my heart.  I really thought I would step away from it, and sadly so, as we focus fully this year on settling our precious Emma Kate in at home.  Instead, the Lord raised up a team of friends to help carry the ministry with me!  What a gift.  What a gracious Father.

Generations only meets once a month.  It is an evening to spend together, in fellowship with God at the center of our time. Each month a different woman shares a part of her life with us.  The thing that differentiates this sharing from simply telling a "story" about something, is that these stories are God's glory stories.  They are the recollections of our Lord as the Hero!  Because that is what He is: the Hero!

Paths of righteousness.  That is how the Lord leads us.  That is where the Lord leads us.  Why?  For His name's sake.

So often our paths grow dim.  They are dark and treacherous.  It is hard to see where the road lies ahead of us, and the way looks unpassable with thorns and thistles blocking the way forward.  The truth is that life does bring trouble.  It is often very hard.  Sometimes the road looks like it careens right to the edge of the cliff...and over.  These are scary places to journey.  Hard cliffs to climb.

And yet.

he restores my soul. 
       He guides me in paths of righteousness 
       for his name's sake.  - Psalm 23:3




What is our gaze fixed upon?  What are we looking at?  
More importantly, and this is of the utmost importance: who are we looking at?


Your word is a lamp to my feet
       and a light for my path.  - Psalm 119:105


My path might be impassable for me.  It never is for my Lord!  He is the God who makes a way.  He sees the whole road.  He knows what lies ahead and what came behind.  He girds me from ahead and protects me as I come and go.  Yahweh never tires, He never grows weary, He won't leave me alone and He is not just with me...He is for me.  And while I walk through life, it all matters to Him.  My joy and suffering both matter.  He doesn't turn a blind eye to either.  


This is true for you, too.  This is your God.  This is the heavenly Father who works the night shift on your behalf.  The One and Only who makes a way.


What's interesting, is that life isn't joy or sorrow at one time.  Often, it is an inter-mixing of both.  The celebrations alongside the agony.  Fear and hurt mixed right up with goodness and sweetness.  Our paths rarely look like only one thing.  God asks us to mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice.  I'm learning He is asking me to do that in my own life, because there are usually places for both.  And even in the mourning and the rejoicing, when God is the focus of my gaze, I find that I don't have to look at the path.  Instead all I see is my Lord.  And that?  That changes everything.  Everything.


This year, for my family, we have surely walked that double road.  The wide, beautiful highway of joy where we dance with the Lord at His unfolding goodness as we welcome Emma Kate home.  Her story is such a beautiful testament to our covenant-keeping God.  We also have traversed some of the most frightening ground I have ever trod upon as our sweet Luke suddenly started experiencing seizures.  Many seizures.  And a diagnosis of epilepsy that just keeps unfolding.  It has been, if I may be honest, brutal.


Jesus.  The name that saves.  The One who upholds, sustains and prevails.  There is no other name to call upon.  None.  And for that, I am so thankful.


 All these paths...they are to the believer, and to our Lord,  paths of righteousness.  


God uses it all.  It all, all of it, matters to Him.  Nothing is wasted with Him. 


For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."
                                                                  - Romans 1:17


This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.                                                     - Romans 3:22-25




Fix your eyes.  Don't look to the left or the right.  Fix your eyes on Jesus.


He makes the path walkable.  And He walks it with us and for us.  Our faithful, burden-bearing, covenant-keeping, heights-traversing, thistle-removing, mountain-moving God.


Grab His hand and take the road.