Day 335: 2 John 1–6

To the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth . . . because of the truth that remains in us and will be with us forever (vv. 1–2).

Most days of the year, I can look at my life through a telescope and sit in utter amazement. God has fulfilled dreams I couldn’t have had sense enough to dream. He delivered me from a life of recycling defeat and deeply embedded bitterness. He saved my marriage. He has allowed a former pit-dweller like me to serve someone like you. Oh, He has been indescribably gracious to me . . . just as He has to you.

But then I have these microscope days—days when I am determined to slap the most upsetting thing I can think about on a slide and stare at it for hours, to throw a pity party and resent any loved one who refuses to come.

Let me warn you, Satan will rarely refuse to attend a good pity party. Don’t think for a moment that Satan won’t confront you on the “day of [your] disaster” (Ps. 18:18)—whatever that may be. Sometimes we give him credit for having a heart and respecting when something should be off limits. After all, fair fighters don’t hit a person when she’s down.

Satan is not a fair fighter. He confronts us on our worst days and approaches us with his specialty: lies. You can’t imagine the lies he tries to tell me on my microscope days. Other times he tries a different approach. But just about the time I want to default back to my old coldness, the Spirit of God within me whispers warm breath upon my cooling heart.

Many of us have been loved by unhealthy people who proved deceptive in other ways. We were left injured and confused. Incidentally, if we didn’t let God heal us, we likely became unhealthy people ourselves who continued the process. Unhealthiness is contagious, and deceived people deceive people.

But truth sets us free. God, the great I Am, is the totality of wholeness, completeness, and self-existence. He is both truth and love! While Satan approaches us with hate and lies, we can be “loved in the truth” by God and by those His Spirit fills. Our God will only tell us the truth, and one of His chief truths is that loving is always worth doing.

I feel much better. Sometimes I just have to talk it out. I’m ready to put up my microscope and go back to my bifocals.