I have been the Lord your God since the land of Egypt. Hosea 12:9a 

Our family has moved many times over the years. We, like many of you reading this, have had to learn how to make different kinds of places ‘home’. We have been involved in various kinds of churches, assorted in denomination. While we enjoyed making new friends, there was always a challenge. The new affiliations we made didn’t know our history. They didn’t know the places where we grew up; the schools, teachers, and life experiences that shaped us. They didn’t know our parents. They never walked the grounds of our childhood home. Their ability to really understand how we were wired was compromised by lack of history. That was isolating and lonely. 

I can never accuse God of not understanding my life. He was involved from the beginning, which started even before my conception. He knew my story even before I lived it. He was an active participant throughout my lifetime even while I was in the land of Egypt. He knew I would become a slave for many years and how I would respond internally to imprisonment. He took note of it all and with every seeming step backwards, He wrote redemptive opposites into my storyline. 

I am still under a transformational work. There are things, even today, which puzzle me about myself and why I respond to life like I do. But now, I know who to run to. “Reveal myself to me, Lord”…is a prayer that started turning my life around some years ago. Because He has been my God throughout the course of my entire life’s history, He has divine insight into what makes me the person I am. He is gracious to say, “The reason you did that was because……” It is a comfort to be in the embrace of One who not only knows me, but loves me. 

Some are intimate today with those who know too much about them and use the information against them. Oh, they are not like God. We must be careful to make God our refuge. Only He deserves the abandon of childlike trust. Only He should be given the power to write and shape our identity. 

I rest in the comfort of our history. I give You all the power to re-write my past and reveal my future. Amen