Our Season of Sufficiency

I will praise You in the desert

In the dry season

The sun scorching the earth

No relief in sight

The world collapses under the weight

Of failed expectations

Put not your faith in man nor women

They will let you down every time

Like sand running through your fingers

You cannot get back what has been crushed in your soul

You are all I have left

You are all I need

Water to my thirst

Succor in my time of dryness

I will praise You in the desert

I will praise You in the tempest

Though the winds of pain tear through my life

Deluged with disappointments past

Drowned in the sorrows of bitterness

The waves crash down upon me

Surrounding me

Pushing down on me

No one reaches out

None are good, not even one

Selfishness over righteousness

Expediency over love

But You reach down to pull me out

Brush the tears aside

And dry the deepest recesses of my being

You are all that I have left

You are all I need

Shelter from the storm

Warmth in a season of battering rain

I will praise You in the tempest

I will praise you in wilderness

Though dangers lurk around every turn

Stumbling lost through a harsh and unforgiving world

Every day blends into the next

As the forest of life only seems to get thicker

Closing in on me

Losing my focus, my will

I cry out to take this all away

Like Paul with his thorn

Or Elijah who thought he had reached his end

Desperation in a season of despair

Loneliness born from confusion

But You are the way

The truth and the life

Making the crooked paths straight before me

Replacing my fears

With faith

Completely surrounded by cruelty

You are all I have left

You are all I need

Clearing aside the obstacles in this world

Restoring love from betrayal

I will praise You in the wilderness

I will praise you in the valley

Shadowed by death

Death of trust and assurance

The demise of what you believed in

What you put your hope in

Store up not treasures here on earth

There are none redeemable

The valley is merciless

Its walls impending doom

Rising far above what we can possibly handle

There seemingly is no way out

No way out from the torment we create in our own minds

Duplicity rules the day

No one is what they seem

Trust not, care not

How can you profess to love God and not care?

The shackles we are straining against

Are often of our own creation

To hold us in the valley

The yoke that binds our necks to our pain

Are often of our own design

Yet he breaks the yoke

Removes the shackles

If we allow Him

If we stop for just a mere moment

Stop trying to rationalize and figure things out

Under our own power

Lean not says the Lord

Upon your own understanding

But we sometimes refuse to simply acknowledge

What He has brought into our lives for good

And we have ruined with our own logic

Or feelings, or self-centeredness

You are all I have left

You are all I need

You have prepared a mountaintop for me

In the presence of mine enemies

Within the presence of my pain

My guilt

My past

My sin

My inadequacies

My fear

My love

My love which I fear

You ask me to dine with them just one more time

Before You take them away from me

And give me Your yoke

Which is easy, and light

So I will praise you in the valley

He is your water in the desert

He is your shelter in the tempest

He is your way out, of the wilderness you willingly walk into

He is your exceeding mountaintop at the end of your valley

Praise Him for all that He is

Praise Him for all that He has been

Praise Him for all that He has yet to come

For when the desert has seared your pain away

And the storm has washed away your guilt

When the wilderness has shown you the way out of your past

And the valley has brought you through

You will have to praise Him

For He is all that you have left

Anthony Wade May 14, 2008