Today is Day 120 of 2021.
Where are you at the one-third mark of the year?
I think it’s good to ask ourselves that simple, basic, grounding question: “Where are you?”
It’s the question that God asked Adam in the garden when Adam was hiding in shame. It’s the question we dread hearing when, like Adam, we know we’ve fallen short of expectations.
For Adam, it was sin that made him want to hide.
For us, it may be failure, or fear, or an unmet expectation, or an unfulfilled goal.
But just like in Adam’s story, I think asking ourselves where we are opens the door for the possibility that we don’t have to stay where we are.
God was reminding Adam that hiding in the shadows would never heal what could only be dealt with in the light. My, how we struggle to bring things to the light.
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We don’t start budgeting because we don’t want to see how badly we’ve handled our money, and yet we’ll never handle it better if we don’t get an accurate picture of how bad it is. So, we keep spending and never look at the balance. We don’t open bank statements. We pay overdraft fees. We find that they aren’t nearly as costly as the shame that comes from knowing we should be able to do better. We stay hidden and the cycle continues.
We have a crisis and know we can’t handle it alone, but we don’t want to risk what others might think if we opened up to them. “What if they really knew?” is a question that can push us deeper into a place where they never will, even though them knowing may be the only way to find the care and support that we actually need.
Light hurts when we’ve been in the dark, but light is what we need. And so, God asks, “Where are you?”
This may be a good time to stop and ponder the question because not only do you still have 66.666667% of the year left to finish what you started, you also have the rest of your life for God to finish what he started in you.
And he will. Philippians 1:6 says he’s a great finisher.
