I remember learning punctuation in school, but I don’t remember when.  It didn’t “click” for me as quickly as some things did, and I remember even in high school being unsure of which marks to put where … especially when it came to commas, semicolons, and colons.  This week`s eDevotional is not a writing lesson, so please don’t hold it against me if I’m not grammatically correct after bringing up the subject.  But, one thing I do remember is that we use commas in the middle of sentences, and we use periods at the end of sentences.   “What does all this have to do with God?” you might ask.  Read on.

I believe our lives are like a big compound (and sometimes complex) sentence.  I also believe that the period belongs at the end, not near the beginning or anywhere else in the middle.  I see the tendency in myself and others, especially when things aren’t going well, to give into the notion that things will never change.  It’s also easy to paint people (maybe someone who has let us down in some way, or maybe even someone we hardly know but judge solely based on their appearance or current circumstances)  in a permanent light where the Lord simply has them in transition.

The Lord used a parable one time to illustrate the danger in judging people (ourselves and others) too soon.  He spoke of a man who sowed good, wheat seed in his field; however, his enemy came during the night and sowed tares in the field.  When they sprang up, the man’s servants wanted to jump in and pull out the tares, but he told them to wait, fearing they would also uproot some of the wheat by mistake.  He told them that at harvesting they would do the separating.

The Lord will one day place a period at the end of our lives, but until that day he gives us commas … places for us  to pause briefly, for our circumstances to change, and best of all for us to change.

God bless, and have a great week!

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