I had become quite content in my walk with God. I felt I had arrived, at least to some degree of Christ-likeness.  But in our present state of being, God wants us to know, our goodness is not so good to Him.   There is nothing like troubles to test our faith, grab our joy and shake our foundation.  When life becomes hard, we are led back to our Source of Strength and told to "Come up higher, there's more to Me than you know. There's more of you that needs refining. You have only scratched the surface of who I am, oh you of little faith."   

With these feelings in mind, I recently found this reading from  Streams In The Desert by L.B. Cowman.  It spoke to me.  You, too,  may see yourself in this setting as you go through times of refinement.  It's for our good.  There's always a reason.

  "One day in the early summer I walked past a beautiful meadow.  The grass was as soft and thick and fine as an immense green Oriental rug.  In one corner stood a fine old tree, a sanctuary for numberless wild birds; the crisp, sweet air was full of their happy songs.  Two cows lay in the shade, the very picture of content."

"Down by the roadside the saucy dandelion mingled his gold with the royal purple of the wild violet. I leaned against the fence for a long time, feasting my hungry eyes, and thinking in my soul that God never made a fairer spot than this lovely meadow."

"The next day I passed that way again and the hand of the despoiler had been there.  A plowman and his great plow, now standing idle in the furrow, had in a day wrought a terrible havoc.  Instead of the green grass there was turned up  to view the ugly, bare, brown earth; instead of the singing birds, there were only a few hens industriously scratching for worms.  Gone were the dandelion and the pretty violet.  I said in my grief, "How could anyone spoil a thing so fair?"

"Then my eyes were opened by some unseen hand, and I saw a vision, a vision of a field of ripe corn ready for the harvest.  I could see the giant, heavily laden stalks in the autumn sun; I could almost hear the music of the wind as it swept across the golden tassels. And before I was aware, the brown earth took on a splendor it had not had the day before."

"Oh, that we might always catch the vision of an abundant harvest, when the great Master Plowman comes, as He often does, and furrows through our very souls, uprooting and turning under that which we thought most fair, and leaving for our tortured gaze only the bare and the unbeautiful."

"God loves us the way we are, but too much to leave us that way."
Leighton Ford
 

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