Knotter's Psalms

In a session I facilitated during a leadership seminar, I asked the participants to draw their life graphs and reflect on their journey of faith. As an example, I shared with them the graph of Joseph's life, which had a fair share of crests and troughs. A book by Robert Morris, from dream to destiny, describes how each valley and mountain top experience of Joseph's life was associated with some test of his faith.  As I reflected on the 11th psalm, I came across this verse that clearly said: "The LORD tests the righteous..."! Tests are never easy. I can empathize with the psalmist when he writes: " How can you say to my soul "Flee as a bird to your mountain"? ". The instinct to run away from our share of tests, is so human. Often, we develop coping or hiding mechanisms as well. Unknowingly, we may be exposing ourselves to danger, a trap or even innocuous but deadly thoughts, action and habits, with our wrong responses. "For look! The wicked ben

  A Time for Everything 1 For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. 2 A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. 3 A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. 4 A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance. 5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away. 6 A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away. 7 A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak. 8 A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace. 9 What do people really get for all their hard work?  10 I have seen the burden God has placed on us all.  11 Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.  12 So I concluded there is noth