I was so bummed when the developers next door took those trees down!

I used to park under them so my black-on-black sedan wouldn’t get so blistering hot under the summer sun.

But they’re building something amazing next door – a posh rest home for the private pay crowd. It’s going to be a state of the art, custom landscaped campus to help retirees enter the winter of their lives in elegance. So the developers did not leave the old walls and footings from the last rest home that stood there. Nope. They are chopping down trees and digging up basements. The high things are being brought down and the valleys are being filled up.

Amazing how that happens when The Builder is up to something amazing.

I’m so tempted to lament the loss of the familiar mountains and valleys that have dotted the pathways of my journey. And on my better days I can’t help but suspect that it’s because The Builder is up to something really, really great in my life.

Careers, relationships, addresses, and the coming and going of children, were all once seen as immovable as the landscape – but that’s not what the journey had in store. Instead, we are being honed and shaped and formed - scars, smiles, and all - to be who we’re supposed to be.

So in keeping with the Spirit of Advent, let us remember that God’s not finished with us. We’re to be alert and open-minded to the ways God is messing with the landscape – and continuing to form us into the kind of people God wants us to be. Take heart. Be not afraid. It’s all part of the plan. God is up to something amazing.