He leads me beside the quiet waters

He leads me beside the quiet waters, He restores my soul

Ps 23: 2b,3a

In spite of struggles, pain, questions and failure, God continues to be GOOD and to be GOD!

In the midst of my failures, my sin, & the failures of others, I can only come back to the truth that God is good all the time.

Life sucks... it sometimes stinks and stings, but I can see God´s hand because these very things have forced me to focus on Him. To reach out for Him as focusing on anything else leads to despair and desperation.

I have reached places in my soul, in my life and experience which I have so feared to reach yet here I am. I can do nothing but just drop everything and reach out to HIM.

In this place of death to self I become free. I am bound to only be concerned with what God thinks, His expectations and for His will to be done in me and those I love.

If only I had reached my end before now. I would surely have discovered this sweet place sooner! "He leads me beside the quiet waters....He restores my soul..."Yes, indeed, the road that lead me here was painful, but I have re-discovered a priceless treasure , I have re-discovered God.

I have embraced afresh my first love, that I had lost somewhere in trying to reach my plans and dreams. In this place of surrender I have seen God plant seeds of hope. How can this be? It makes no sense and has no logic. How can pain lead me here?

Because I have found delight in God alone. How simple...how sweet. To once again hand over the keys of my heart and give up controlling my world. I am
singing with the hymnist:

I surrender all
I surrender all
All to thee my blessed saviour
I surrender all.

Check out video above.

Simplicity

(Translation:
I delight in simplicty
In the fullness of God´s love
And I face each day with serenity
and trust.
Simplicity)

I read this story in an old 1990's Readers Digest that I have in the bathroom.....hahaha! I just had to share it with you:

"Working at a College with a preponderance of non-English speaking students, my sister sometimes had difficulty in communicating with the newly arrived.

Once as she was enrolling a young man, she reached a standstill at the question of birth date. No matter what words or motions she used, the young man remained puzzled. Finally, a Chinese student standing nearby asked my sister, "What do you need to know?" After my sister explained, the Chinese woman turned to the young man and hummed the first few bars of "Happy Birthday to You."

His eyes lit up in recognition as he exclaimed, "May 12, 1955" The helpful student shrugged and said, "Same song, every country.""

Isn't it true that we complicate things that could be so simple? I know I do. Often I find myself trying to solve something using the most difficult approach.....like the girl trying to find out the birth date of the student. After trying all she knew to do she was at a loss...who knows what she tried before she gave up? The student who helped solve an apparently unsolvable problem, did it by singing the classic Happy Birthday to You song. So simple.

I am sure there are lots of moments when we think that there is no other way to deal with a certain difficulty and God comes along and sings "Happy Birthday to You!"



As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness. ~Henry David Thoreau

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. ~Leonardo DaVinci

The greatest truths are the simplest: so likewise are the greatest men. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. ~Hans Hofmann, Introduction to the Bootstrap, 1993