God, Snails and Us

"By perseverance the snail reached the ark." -Charles Spurgeon Spurgeon was a preacher of another century If he had said it today there are possibly a number of ways to say what he meant. Certainly stick-ability could have been a part of the statement. But there is a delightful measure in his statement, one that is set by the second word he uses perseverance has a sense of stick-ability. The snail is by nature a slow mover. For a pair of snails to make it to the ark on time for the launch it would have had to be closer than almost all the other creatures. But this is a side issue to my thinking for today. Sometimes we get to a point where we seem to be standing still, at best, or going backward. Movement is a luxury and our Leader/Master seems to be disappearing into an unknown future, but have no fear. It is a matter of perspective, yours and mine the Master is only a step away waiting for us to take that step; a step of faith. This step may be a matter of stopping and praying. Seeking the way to go in order to return to His side. I remember a time not so long ago where I imagined that He had a new direction for me to move, but what He was doing was letting me stand in my own ability. For months He had held my hand giving me the words to write and suddenly nothing: eventually I learnt that I could write and honour Him. Now I listen for inspiration and write as my thinking directs but always conscious that God must be honoured by the words I write. So then to return to the snail we need to remember that each of us have our own speed. This is an interesting thought that has a practicable application. We move at our own speed as assigned by Father. For instance I could never cover ground like an athlete, I am not built that way and in all probability the athlete may find my speed prosaic. But in our own way we could be giving God the glory in our lives. Jesus before He returned to the Fathers side gave a promise that He would be with us to the end of the age, this includes this point in time. Now this means that He is as close as a breath to us all. If we dont feel Him then as someone parodied who moved but even then that is not entirely an accurate statement. My recent experience with getting new topics for the blog indicates that there are times when He allows us to learn stuff that He want us to learn through the apparent absence of His hand. This not only teaches us the object lesson but can also serves to deepen our experience of God. Father stands at our side waiting for us to move. In the Israelis Journey from Egypt they had to cross two bodies of water to reach the Land of Promise. The first was the Red Sea buoyed by the fact that they had Moses and imperilled by the onslaught of the Pharaoh, they made it to the other side. The second crossing was at the end of the journey. Moses was dead and the only thing they had was the Ark of the Covenant but they crossed over to enter into their future but they had to step out into the river to complete the journey. This is a model of movement for us, God is with us as we move in His direction, any other direction is away from Him.