Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this:
Psalm 37:5 (NIV)
Put It Where God Is
The fourth graders have never heard their gym teacher raise his voice. Out on the field that means everything gets brought to him. A ball over the fence. A kid who says the tag was late and a kid who says it wasn’t. A shoe with the lace knotted so badly its owner has given up on it. All morning they walk their trouble across the grass and set it down in front of him.
Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this. He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn, your vindication like the noonday sun. God does the showing, and he does it where the people who had it wrong about you are standing too. Those words go to people who are watching others get ahead by cheating, and who are being told, in the middle of that, not to fret.
Committing a thing means putting it down where God is. You can do that and still report what happened, still say the true thing to whoever’s business it is. Who are you still trying to convince?
God brings a person’s vindication up into the open, and he does it himself, in front of the ones who were sure about you and the ones who never looked. Dawn and noon are pictures of how plain the thing will be. When yours comes is his to decide, and he hasn’t said.
The whistle goes and the class lines up by the door, sweaty and still disagreeing about who was out. A woman comes out of the building and waits at the edge of the blacktop until the line straightens. Then she tells them to come in, and that whoever owns the knotted shoe should come find her.
A Prayer to Remember
You have brought things into the daylight for me before, Father, after I’d stopped expecting it. I’m carrying something right now that I keep taking back from you an hour after I give it over. Take it again, and take it the next four times too.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
