Yet...

Every Sunday morning at church I wonder when God will speak to me during a worship service. I have no doubt that God is speaking all the time but there always seems to be a moment where something transpires during a worship service that really hits home for me on a very personal basis.

Sometimes it happens during the middle of the sermon.
Sometimes it happens during the middle of a song.
Sometimes it happens during the middle of a prayer.
Sometimes it happens during the middle of reading a bible verse.

Today it happened at the end of the Announcements!

My iWitness...

The Associate Pastor at our church was making the usual announcements about upcoming events, encouraging people to attend and the like.

At the end of the announcements he told of an email that he received from some missionary friends that he knew from his days in China. They were making their way back to the states and put all of their earthly and extra special belongings in a container and had it shipped over.

Unfortunately, the container flooded and they lost everything.

In the email they sent to the Associate Pastor they concluded it with this verse...

Though the fig tree does not bud
    and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
    and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
    and no cattle in the stalls,
¹⁸ yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
    I will be joyful in God my Savior. (Habakkuk 3. 17-18)

As I look around my new surroundings in the Midwest I have a few fig trees that are not budding.
Some of the vines in my workplace have no grapes.
I have failed my social crop of friends and family on numerous levels.
My spiritual life at times is like the barren cornfield that produces no food and believe me when I say that I have looked and looked into the pen and into the stalls of personal fulfillment and success and there is nothing there.

Yet...
Please hear this three letter word!

Yet... I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior!

And for goodness sake... let's not forget verse 19...

The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
    he enables me to tread on the heights.

It looks like I have some heights to climb.
I guess I'm just waiting to get my deer shoes on...

And that's my iWitness...
Laugh often and Fear not!
David!