I regret showing Charlotte, our four-year old granddaughter, what to do with an Oreo cookie. It was a winter Saturday afternoon at our house during our monthly weekend to keep her and her brother Wade. He was taking a nap and she and I were sitting at the kitchen table where I watched her stare at a package of Oreo’s. So I grabbed one and gently pulled off one of the black wafers. Then I licked the white cream until it was gone and said “Yum, Yum!”

And in a nanosecond, Charlotte of course mimicked me. But she refused to eat the black parts. She said, “Poppie, it tastes better in the middle!” Even though I couldn’t disagree with her, at least I ate two black wafers in front of her but it was too late. She had already tasted the good stuff.

That encounter reminds me of the time God showed me one of His many morsels of truths, found in the middle of the Bible. It was very much needed as back then, I kept replaying a laundry list of problems in my mind I was powerless to fix.

But God pursued me one morning as I drove past a farm that is nestled under White Oak mountain, that sits right next to our neighborhood, located off of Ringgold Ooltewah road in Ringgold, Georgia.  

I can’t remember if I was coming or going, but I looked over at the sprawling landscape and searched for the black cattle. Some were either ruminating or sitting under a tree in the shade. They were dispersed like black dots on the land and upward on ascending hills.

Not long after that, one morning before dawn, in what I call the secret place, I sat in our downstairs den after shutting the door and picking up my Bible. “What should I read today?” Instead of opening it, I held it and with both of my thumbs pressed in the middle of what is called the fore-edge, the opposite side of the spine.

I then opened it to the Psalms located smack-dab in the middle of the Bible. God knows what we are spiritually hungry for, and on that summer morning, He fed me with this verse:

“For all the animals of the forest are mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills.” (Psalm 50:10, NLT)

I loved this promise so much when I first found it and memorized it, and still pull it from memory whenever I feel poor in spirit or feel lacking in strength due to stressing situations.

A lot of folks don’t view that verse as a promise but I do considering the provisions God provides for each of us daily. God’s resources are limitless. And we have access to Him because of the intercessory work of Jesus.

I already believed that only God’s words could fill my spiritual appetite from a verse I first read many decades ago-“Taste and see that the Lord is good…”(Psalm 34:8a)

But to ask God to come into our situations, fears and troubles takes faith. However, the visual from the farm increased my faith that day. May it increase yours. It’s one thing to know that He owns the cattle on a thousand hills but it’s quite another to believe it-that his resources are limitless. Because if you believe it, you’ll ask for His help. He is waiting. Our neediness won’t make Him turn away.

pictures courtesy of pexels.com