The question

For you have forgotten the God of your salvation

and have not remembered the Rock of your refuge;

therefore, though you plant pleasant plants

and sow the vine-branch of a stranger,

though you make them grow on the day that you plant them,

and make them blossom in the morning that you sow,

yet the harvest will flee away

in a day of grief and incurable pain.  Isaiah 17:10-11

A reminder that unless I build our house on the strong foundation of obedience, it will not stand in the storms of life.  It is so easy to go charging off into reasonable, healthy plans, rushing about with to do lists and well-intentioned advise.  But.  

How does one forget the LORD God Almighty?  Pathetically easily.  

When people ask me, oh yes the Fred question again, when I became a Christian, it is a long story.  Like everyone’s story, of moving into alignment with God, of taking steps toward Him, or at least turning and facing the right direction.

There was the Little Visits with God moment, reading a nighttime devotional book with my dad in his big king-sized bed when I first “prayed the prayer,” highly motivated by the great pleasure my little sister had brought to my parents by doing the same.  Then, the “rededication” prayer at Joy Bible Camp, the same week man landed on the moon.  Then, another “Oh, I get it” moment when I was twelve.  But the real moment came years later.  I was spinning my webs.  Making my plots.  Organizing not only my life, but that of everyone  else in my small sphere of influence.  I can exactly remember the rock I was sitting on in the quad at Wheaton College next to my dorm.  

The question came to me, under the brisk but bright October night sky.  “Who is LORD of your life?”  As distinct as an audible voice, it broke through the self-babble.  Pause. Consider.  And with a crushingly clear understanding I stepped down off of the little chair in the center of the circle of my soul, the familiar Four Spiritual Laws pamphlet illustration that I knew so well.  

You are, Oh Holy One of the Universe.  May it be so.