Just Sit

When I was in the third grade my parents told me we were moving. My little heart was broken. I think I cried for a month. I didn’t want to leave my friends, and the home I loved so much. I can remember throwing rocks at the For Sale sign in our front yard, I even pulled it out of the ground once and hid it.


But then we moved, and slowly I came to love our new home. The one we endearingly called “the farm”.
My imagination came alive on that old farm. I began writing stories in the fourth grade. It was a place to dream, and I sat and dreamed a lot.


I sat at my piano overlooking our beautiful apple orchard. I sat in the apple trees.
I sat in the kitchen shucking corn and snapping beans.I sat on the hills overlooking acres and acres of breathtaking land. I sat in bed as my mom read to me each night. I sat in church and I sat in confessional every week. I sat on our horse and I sat in our hayloft. I sat on our cellar door and on our milk house steps. I even sat in our out house.


And…
I sat and cried when we had to move again.
I loved that old farm.


God had given me something beautiful and then taken it away. It wasn’t the first time little Charisse went through something painful, and it certainly wasn’t the last.


Here’s the thing though,
Today I can sit and I can see why.


Not only did I become “me” on that farm, due to heartbreaking circumstances involving the move, my family came to know Christ.


And today I sit at His feet.
What a beautiful place to dream.


Time and time again I thought God was taking the wonderful things I loved away from me because I did something wrong. Surely He was punishing me. But that wasn’t the case at all. Each time God took something, He replaced it with something so much better.
He did it because He loves me.


And now at the age of 57, I can’t even count the number of times God has done this in my life. Given me something better. With His grace in my heart and His word on my lap, today I sit and smile.


When people invite you to sit, you know that old saying~ “Take a load off”?
That’s literally what Christ tells us to do.
Give Him the load.


Imagine if we made a New Year’s resolution to sit more. I think people would laugh if you told them that was your intention. Sitting is such an easy thing to do. How often do we do it without a thought…
but what if we actually did think about it every time we sat down? Giving all your heaviness to Christ and recalling all the times He blessed you with something better.


Whatever you might be going through today, sit with Jesus. You might not understand things now, but if you will just sit with Him through it, you will see that His “beautiful” is always so much better than our own.


No striving. No trying to figure things out.
Just sitting with Jesus.
What a beautiful place to dream.
​what a beautiful place to be.






SCRIPTURE READING
Jeremiah 29:11
Psalm 77:1-14, 78:4,6-7