Thursday Writing...11/15/16..."Knowing Fully"

Good morning

As I walked through the thick smoke and smelled it it came to mind that even when the air quality is normal we do not always understand what we are seeing or feeling. We are often walking around in a fog of confusion due to how we process things. Prayer is the only answer, and still we do not see things as they really are. Here is a quote from this writing, "Father, We ask You to show us how to see more clearly when we look at things, so that we can see them as they really are. 

Perhaps it is time to practice not jumping to conclusions. but rather waiting for God to show us what we need when we have prayed to Him about our thought challenges.

Corinne

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Today's Devotional

"Knowing Fully"

written by

Corinne Mustafa

When I was a child,
I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.
When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. 

Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

1 Corinthians 13:11-12

Today in my town, Livermore, California, which is about 200 miles south of the worst fire in the history of California, it was the worst day of smoke and the smell of fire. The air looked like a serious fog...like what I had lived through in my childhood home in New England. The odor of smoke was strong, and the warning was that the toxic elements in the air could be fatal if one breathed it in for long. It was the worst situation that we have had to deal with since the recent  fires began.

There had been fires in the last couple of years that wreaked their damage and then died down. We were remiss to judge these current fires in the light of the fires in the past two years. There has been no comparison. 

We have had to look away from the reflection in the mirror and plan to see face to face and to know fully. This is not easy. We are very myopic and often see what we think is reality, but we are misled by our interpretations of what we see and hear. It is often skewed buy the "smoke" of our misleading judgements of what is truth. This is often so common (as they say) "Looking through a glass darkly."

Prayer is all we have at this temporal time. Even through prayer we see only a shadow of what we will awed by as we become able to see it face to face, because we can do only see clearly when we are looking through the eyes of God.

Father, 

We ask You to show us how to see more clearly when we look at things, so that we can see them as they really are. This way we can truly understand what we are looking at and how to judge it. As You tell us in Your word....

                                       "Then you will know the truth 

                                        and the truth will set  you free." 

                                                           John 8:32

Thank You, Father. 
Amen.

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Suggestions of Some Ways to  Pray

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Prayers are lifted up daily for you

 by the Devotional Writers and the Monthly Writing Staff

 of Women's Focus Ministries.

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Jan Andersen, Sandy Billingham, Carol Steficek,   

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