The Light of the Moon

Image: Exsodus / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Early one morning when I was trying to have my quiet time, I looked out the sliding glass window into my backyard. It was dark outside, but the moon was full and bright.

I’ve been feeling like I don’t have much energy for anything lately and a large part of that has been struggling with the Lord. I want to do what He wants me to do, but I just don’t know what it is. I want to do a lot of things, but I don’t have enough of myself to go around.

Looking at that full moon amazed me. It glows so brightly and yet has no energy of its own, no light at all. It is a great big rock in the sky, but when it lines up just right with the sun, it reflects the sun’s light. The moon can actually light up the night enough to see by just by reflecting the sun’s light.

I am just like the moon. I have NO light of my own. I’m just a body floating along, but when I line up my life with the Lord…the SON sun…I can reflect His light and that’s when I appear as though I’ve energy of my own.

The other thing that is interesting is how we go in cycles. We can rotate, like the moon, through different phases. Sometimes, there is no moon times when we aren’t reflecting the Lord at all. Sometimes we reflect just a little sliver. Sometimes we are the full moon reflecting. Those phases are all normal and the Lord understands.

Right now I’m just a sliver of the moon…and so I long for the time again when I can be a full moon for the Lord.

What's Buried Underneath?

Today my daughter bought her first new pair of earrings since she got her ears pierced this summer. She's changed her earrings some and has taken great care of her ears, but when she went to change her earrings today, she found her earring back stuck to her ear.

We were in the car when she first noticed it, so I couldn't see it, but I just assumed it was just crusted on or something. But no, that earring back is stuck IN her ear. I can't believe it. I'm taking her to the doctor to have it removed tomorrow. The biggest part is inside with only the little tip showing, so we can't just yank it out. It is going to take some precision and pain numbing medication.

With the new year starting, many of us take a little extra time to reexamine our lives and try to make changes to become better people. We make resolutions to quit this or start that...stick with me, this does relate to the earring.

I've found this year that there are a few habits I'd like to break, and a few habits I'd like to make. I have so many good intentions and what I'm really fed up about with myself right now is my making of those plans, goals and priorities and then ignoring them completely. It is really hard to make all those things happen even though they'd be good for me.

For example, I want to spend the time from 3:00 to 5:00 pm away from the computer. That is the time the big girls get home from school. I always have some project I'm working on. The girls come home and I'm not able to give them my attention because I'm engrossed in something else. This is something that I want to get better about. I want to work on my listening skills so I really hear what they are saying to me. Why can't I just fix it!

I realized tonight that this incident with the earring is exactly what happens to us with habits. We can't just yank them out and be done with it! The biggest parts are deep inside. We need some outside help for their removal. It isn't an instant fix...and it might even be painful. I need to allow enough time for God to work on me.

Another point to ponder is, how do those negative habits work their way into our lives in the first place. With the earring, I think that it was a slow process and she didn't even know it was happening. She had ignored her ears, paid no attention to changing, cleaning, turning those earrings. When we let life just go on without questioning...ride the waves of life without direction, bad things become habits spontaenously. We've got to pay attention. We've got to take action and not ignore the problems because they easily get worse and worse and harder to deal with.