Living and Active

Y'all, I am enamored with the Word of the Lord today. I am in awe of the power of God's Word to comfort, encourage, challenge, and bless. As some of you are aware, this is that time in the semester when midterms are schedules, papers come due, assignments pile up. That's plenty of stress. Then, at work, two coworkers who I depend on a lot to make my job go more smoothly tendered their resignations. At home, both of my WONDERful roommates have been very ill and my cousin was coming in for a weekend visit. At church, I was filling in as teacher in one of the ladies' classes, introducing a new quarter's study from Isaiah. Needless to say, I've had a lot going on, and for those of you who know me so well, you know that I rarely know how to ask for help until I've come completely to the end of all my strength and resources. :-\ So, it wasn't until last night, after the evening service that the emotional let down began to occur -- in front of several friends and strangers! Praise the Lord that His house is a safe place to be broken. But, that's not even the good part. :-)
Today, amazingly enough, the sun did come out -- in full force as a matter of fact! And, I did get out of bed and make it to work after spending an abbreviated time with the Lord this morning. That was the first blessing from His Word, just being reminded that He longs to have fellowship with us. Then, I received an email from a friend reminding me to "pray on my spiritual armor" and a voicemail from another, reading the words of Matthew 11:25-32 for me, "Come to Me all ye who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest ..." Then, I found a text message that was "accidentally" left in my phone with the reference to Isaiah 50:10, "10 Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the word of his servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God." I had to laugh at that point. God knew over a month ago when a friend was playing with my cell phone that I wouldn't find that verse until today, when I so desperately needed to be reminded of His faithfulness to those who fear Him and seek to obey His commands. Finally, I came home this afternoon to put in a little work on a paper before my class and opened an email from another friend with very familiar words from Psalm 65, including verse 11, "You crown the year with bounty and your carts overflow with abundance."
I share all of this with you to say that there is no comfort like the comfort of the living and active Word of the Lord, and I am thankful for friends God is using to point me back to it when other distractions threaten to crowd it from view.