Out of all the innumerable sounds in heaven and earth, God pays special attention to the voice of his people. Psalm 34 is not simply a theological statement of this fact—it is the personal testimony of David, when he was a fugitive running for his life. He celebrates his own experience of God hearing his cry for help.

Have you ever considered all the things you hear in the course of one day? This morning, I heard birds singing outside, and the voices of my family. I heard the coffee machine and the clink of plates and cutlery at breakfast. Right now, I’m hearing the noise of construction above the ever-present sounds of traffic and the occasional gust of wind. I haven’t even had lunch yet. There will be plenty more to fill my ears before this day is finished.
Have you ever considered all the things that God hears? The creator of sound waves hears the unceasing worship of angels before his throne. He hears the swirling wind of Jupiter and the ice that melts on Mars. He hears beyond what is audible to us—the ultrasonic songs of katydids and the footsteps of aphids. He hears beyond the limits of location—
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In the days and weeks that followed the accident, Brian and his wife Amisha started noticing that God’s provision for them often came through relationships and events that had been set in motion long before their specific needs arose. Before Silas was born, God had inspired Amisha to train as a nurse, little knowing how her degree would eventually help her own child. The nurse who had trained her later became the patient care coordinator for the entire hospital, and she was the one on duty when the accident happened, ensuring that Silas received the best possible care in the best possible time. Six months before the accident happened, Silas had started dating the granddaughter of the county commissioner. The commissioner told his friend, the CEO of the hospital, that Silas was receiving care there.

In Luke 19, a short tax-collector named Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus as he passed through the crowd. He did see Jesus. Even better, Jesus saw him. Then Jesus stopped and spoke to him, and went to his home for dinner, and Zacchaeus was never the same from that day on. I’ve heard this story since I was a child, but I’d never thought too much about the sycamore tree itself until my friend Brian directed my attention to it. Did you know that sycamore trees in Israel can live for hundreds of years? And the one Zacchaeus climbed must have been fully mature if it was big enough to hold a grown man (a short man, granted) and allow him to see above other people’s heads. To be there for that particular moment of need, that tree must have been growing for decades, at least, and possibly longer. 
When we think of God’s providential provision for his children, we often think in immediate terms—the unexpected financial gift that comes on the day the bill is due, the odds-defying recovery, or the new job starting right when the severance pay ended. These kinds of immediate interventions are marvellous. They should lead us to praise and give thanks to the God who gives them. But we should also be ready to see that many of God’s provisions are prepared for us long before our needs arise. Remember, God is above time. He invented it. If he wants to, he can plant a sycamore tree in exactly the right place 100 years before the man who needs to climb it to see Jesus is even born. Is it any less miraculous if God begins his provision a century in advance? I don’t think so. And he can do the same kind of thing in our lives as well. 
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Creating habits of hiding, self-deception, and self-justification is a dangerous game, and I’m the first loser. I must own my wrongs fully. But that doesn’t mean I have to live under the guilt and shame of regret forever—I have a Saviour who offers full forgiveness freely, though it came at great cost to himself. 

What would it be like to be able to look back at your whole life and say with confidence, “no regrets”? It sounds amazing, but I can’t say I know how it feels. When I look back, there are plenty of moments that are permanently stuck as perfect, vivid memories—not because I’m proud of them, but because of how much they make me cringe. Out of all the thousands of things I’ve forgotten, I’d love to be able to forget the mean and stupid things I’ve said and the foolish choices I’ve made and the embarrassing immaturity I’ve displayed, but those memories are firmly fixed in place. “No regrets”? I have to be honest, that’s not me. I have regrets.
That’s bad, of course, because it shows how often I’ve gone wrong. Sometimes the problems came from simple ignorance, but other times they were wilful—I knew better, and went ahead anyway. My biggest regrets remind me of these wilful failures, of my selfishness, and sin. They replay my bad attitudes, and pride. Can we change the channel, please?
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I have been rebellious and sinful, absolutely, but I have been forgiven and adopted into God’s own family through Jesus Christ. Whatever I’m wearing, wherever I am, this is my identity. Whatever I’m wearing, whoever I’m with, I want to live this identity out faithfully in every word and every action.

I was sitting in a meeting this week when a thought randomly crossed my mind about how odd it would be if I had come in wearing the clothes I had on earlier that same day, when I went to swim laps at the pool. My goggles and togs didn’t raise any eyebrows at the pool, but they would have at the meeting. And if I had shown up at the pool with my meeting clothes on, that would have drawn a bit of attention, as well.
Clearly, there are appropriate things to wear at appropriate times. When I get this wrong and realise that I’m overdressed or underdressed or somehow looking out of place, I’m embarrassed (though I’ve never worn swim togs to a meeting). This is true of clothes, but it can also apply to the demeanour I put on in different settings. In a formal meeting, I try hard to remember to be formal in my manners and speech. I don’t shout in a setting like that. But I do shout at the basketball court, and I’m even louder on a roller-coaster. I happily make silly faces for small children, but I don’t make any faces like that for airport security officers. Clearly, there are appropriate ways to behave at appropriate times. When I get this wrong and realise that I’ve acted or spoken in ways that do not fit the circumstance I’m in, I’m embarrassed.
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The hard part about picking between bitter and better is not the words. The hard part is believing them. The hard part is looking at a landscape of pain that sometimes stretches out as far as our eyes can see and still believing that this path that says “better” can actually, really, truly bring us to a better reality somewhere beyond the horizon of our sight.

There may only be one letter between bitter and better, but like street signs on the same post, the two words point us in opposite directions. And these signposts are planted firmly, with the same two arrows, at every difficult junction we face on the road of life. No matter how well we may have chosen in the past, or how poorly, the same choice always presents itself all over again: will we let the difficulties of life make us better? Or bitter?
It’s obvious, isn’t it? One choice is literally named “better.” So that’s clearly the choice we’ll always make. Right? Why would we willingly choose to travel a bitter road when a better option is always available to us? The answer is this: we don’t always believe the signposts.
Sometimes our lives become so difficult or our relationships get so messy that we think bitter is the better road. We become convinced that we are entitled to bitterness, that our sufferings have earned us a right to travel where others dare not tread. We may even feel that we must travel that road—
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If you belong to Jesus, you can rest assured that he will absolutely give you tasks that are far beyond what you can handle. An honest look at his commands will show you that he already has. Don’t worry about that. The size of your lunch, or your ability, or your strength, is never the point. Bring your insufficiency to Jesus, and take the next step into impossible obedience. He will do the providing. He can handle it.

John the Baptist was dead. Beheaded. It was unjust, brutal, and senseless. On hearing the news, Jesus left what he was doing and went with his disciples to a solitary place. He must have wanted to mourn, and pray, away from the crowds. But when he arrived, there was no solitude: somehow, word had spread about where he was going, and now a large crowd was waiting for him. Matthew records that Jesus didn’t send them away or throw himself a pity party—“he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” They were suffering, too.
As the day wore on, Jesus’ disciples began to be concerned: what would these people eat for dinner, out there in the middle of nowhere? No one had planned logistics for a gathering like this. Taking stock of the situation, they made a practical suggestion that Jesus send the crowd away so that they could get to the villages and buy food for themselves. Jesus replied: “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.”
I’ve heard people say that “God will never give you more than you can handle.” I don’t think that’s true.
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Trusting God means acting on the knowledge that he knows what he’s talking about, even when his commands don’t make sense to me. Even before I see God’s provision. Even when provision looks impossible. Even when obedience is costly. Even if God doesn’t provide in the ways I think he should. Trusting God means being willing to get my feet wet, knowing that God’s promises will hold, and that in his own way, God’s hand will provide what is needed for the next step.

In 1998, Eva Cassidy recorded an old spiritual called “Wade in the water”. I was listening to her sing it in my car just recently:
Wade in the waterWade in the water, childrenWade in the waterGod’s gonna trouble the water
The lyrics are simple, but this water runs deep. As you’d expect from a spiritual, the reference is biblical. The rest of the song speaks of the children of Israel on the banks of the Jordan river, ready to cross into the promised land. In Joshua chapter 3, God tells the priests of Israel to carry the ark of the covenant, the symbol of his relationship with his people and presence with them, to the edge of the flooded river and stand in the water. They obeyed, and as soon as their feet got wet, God began to stop the flow of a mighty river and clear a path for his people to walk across on dry land.
Dry land—but the feet of the priests were still wet. They were wet because they had to “wade in the water” before God “troubled the water” for them. They had to obey before they saw the provision. They had to take a very literal step of faith into what was entirely impossible for them, trusting that God would keep his promise to take them across. It would have looked pretty silly for them to stand on the edge of the river if God never parted it. But he did.
The same dynamic plays out over and over again in the life of God’s people: we are often faced with situations where we must choose if we will trust God’s promises of provision, or turn away from where he is leading us in order to blaze our own path, by our own means. We like the sound of God’s promises for his children.
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Proximity is more important than size. It is more important than magnificence. You don’t have to be the biggest and shiniest in the universe to bring warmth and light to the people around you. You can be completely average, like our sun, and do the job quite well. You’ve just got to be close. 

All night long we can see the stars shining down on us, but have you ever considered the fact that they also shine down on us all day? It’s not like they adjust the brightness of their burning to our sleep cycles. They shine on, always the same, always contributing something to our light. The big difference for us is just that one local star who comes around every morning and shines so brightly that the light of all the other billions of stars in the universe can’t compete at all.
Our sun is not a large star, as stars go. It’s bigger than some, but there are a lot of stars far bigger than it is—some of them more than 100 times bigger. But those super-massive balls of burning light only look like tiny pinpricks in the sky to us, and they are easily drowned out by our average little local fireball whenever he comes around. It’s not the size of the star that matters most, from our perspective: It’s the proximity. Those huge suns really are huge, but they are too far away to keep us warm. They are too distant to pull us in and shape our calendars and seasons, too far removed to fill the face of our moon with reflected light at night.
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We’ll serve better and longer if we recognise the reality of our limits and live within them. But God gave us this life for a reason—not to be hoarded and protected at all costs, but to be shared generously in the pattern of our Saviour. So tend the fire with wisdom and care. Take reasonable precautions against burning out. 

Have you noticed that people aren’t quite the same after the pandemic? Apparently, humans beings can’t just pause most of their normal life activities for two years and then suddenly switch it all back on again without any difficulties. There are difficulties. People are generally more tired doing the same things, which makes them less willing to commit to the same number of things, which leaves some things undone, or at least struggling to get done. This seems to be especially true for voluntary activities like the local committees and clubs and churches that hold communities together and serve the needy and vulnerable. Serving others in these ways takes time and energy; resources that are already being demanded by commitments we can’t get out of, so often the easiest option is to cut the voluntary activities out. It makes sense. We only have so much to give. If we’re not careful, we’ll burn out. But I know a way to keep that from happening.
Here’s solution that will keep you from ever burning out in your service for others: don’t light the fire in the first place.
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