Bitter turns sweet

"I have work for you."
 
That phrase echoes from last fall.
 
I had no idea what that meant.
 
How could I?
 
 
 
It's work...
 
Finding you.
 
And it's work...

this surrendering to you.

And it's work...
 
dying to my own desires and not letting my emotions get the best of me
 
as I home school,
 
as I have a college-age boy living back at home,

as I wonder where this nomad life we live will lead us next.



Quite honestly -

some days

or moments,

it is a lot of work.

And I don't think I want to work,

at least not this hard.






Work, which is defined as the "sustained physical or mental effort to overcome obstacles and achieve an objective or result, OR the labor, task, or duty that is one's accustomed means of livelihood OR a specific task, duty, function, or assignment often being a part or phase of some larger activity."


Nothing comes easy, they say.

The water of life is sometimes bitter, I say.
 
Very bitter.
 
Yet I'm afraid I've the one that made it that way.
 
Just like the Israelites did.
 
I read this morning how they had to eat the bitter crushed tablets - you know, the ones that the 10 Commandments were written on. Then Moses came down from the mountain because he heard them having a party! He crushed the tablets and mixed them with water and they drank it. They were tired of waiting for a revelation and too scared to get it for themselves, so they made an idol with their precious gold jewelry.

 
And Adam and Eve - their wanting to know . . .

that's what lead them into trouble.
 
You will know .... and that was intriguing to Eve.

So I ponder,
that MY wanting to know
often gets me into trouble.

But my God, He is a Redeemer.

Of all things.

This is what He does:

He makes the bitter water sweet.

And Moses cried unto the LORD; and the LORD showed him a tree, which when he had cast it into the (bitter) waters, the waters were made sweet: there he made for them a statute and an ordinance, and there he proved them.

Ex. 15:25

 

And the process is more important than the product. Because the process changes you. This process is more than bittersweet as we know it. Not sweet with a bitter aftertaste. But bitter (stress, pain, intensity) completely transformed into sweet (pleasing, gentle, fragrant). I have to say it again. And I may not see it yet, but I know the One who is Faithful and True.

He makes the bitter water sweet.