When I am overwhelmed...

I am a person who gets overwhelmed easily. If I am trying to juggle too many things or have a big "things to do list", I am the first person to throw in the towel and quit. Flying home on Monday, looking outside the airplane window made me realize how small I am and how small the little world I live in is in comparison to how big God is. The everyday stress I deal with is nothing in comparison to what others are dealing with or have dealt with. And NOTHING compared to what God can do if I just let Him deal with whatever I am facing that particular stressful day. I have nothing in my life, no need that will require more strength or more power than God exerted when He raised Christ from the grave.

Ephesians 1: 18-20 says, "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.


I love this new song by Sara Groves called "When the Saints" because it reminds me of biblical examples and even examples of modern generations of people who were faithful and pressed on. It reminds me not to give up when small little things seem like great big impossible things……


When The Saints - Sara Groves
Lord I have a heavy burden of all I've seen and know
It's more than I can handle
But your word is burning like a fire shut up in my bones and I can't let it go
And when I'm weary and overwrought with so many battles left unfought
I think of Paul and Silas in the prison yard
I hear their song of freedom rising to the stars
And when the Saints go marching in I want to be one of them

Lord it's all that I can't carry and cannot leave behind
it all can overwhelm me but when I think of all who've gone before me and lived the faithful life, their courage compels me
And when I'm weary and overwrought with so many battles left unfought
I think of Paul and Silas in the prison yard
I hear their song of freedom rising to the stars
I see the shepherd Moses in the Pharaohs court
I hear his call for freedom for the people of the Lord
And when the Saints go marching in I want to be one of them
And when the Saints go marching in I want to be one of them

I see the long quiet walk along the Underground Railroad
I see the slave awakening to the value of her soul
I see the young missionary and the angry spear
I see his family returning with no trace of fear
I see the long hard shadows of Calcutta nights
I see the sisters standing by the dying mans side
I see the young girl huddled on the brothel floor
I see the man with a passion come and kicking down that door
I see the man of sorrow and his long troubled road
I see the world on his shoulders and my easy load
And when the Saints go marching in I want to be one of them
And when the Saints go marching in I want to be one of them I want to be one of them I want to be one of them I want to be one of them


"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." ~ Hebrews