There are seasons of life where I have found that God is more at work doing the little things than he is showing me the big things. Have you ever experienced that?

A year ago, I would probably have said that I was in a spiritual valley. I don’t know if I could identify anything that was wrong, but it just felt like I was in a dry season of my spiritual life, and I didn’t even know why. But as it turns out, now that I can look back at the last several months, maybe it wasn’t such a dry time after all.

For the past several years, I can honestly say that I have never felt more consistent in my spiritual journey. My spiritual disciplines have been growing steadily. I have been learning more and more about God’s Word, consistently becoming aware of new things as I read. My prayer life has never been more more solid. And yet, I felt dry… drained.

But one of the habits I strive to as consistent as possible is the discipline of journaling. And a week or two ago, I took some time to look over and read some of my entries for the last year or so. And frankly, what I read surprised me. I saw two very consistent themes in those pages. The first was that I have frequently felt overwhelmed and tired, to the point where I needed to take a rest. The second was that when I took the time to rest, the next thing in my journal was God pointing something out to me in his Word.

It turns out that my dry season wasn’t so dry after all. What I found in those handwritten pages was that when I was tired, I felt dry, but when I took the time to rest and be renewed, God pointed some little thing out to me, as if just to say, “Hey. I’m still here. And I still love you.” There was nothing big and extravagant here, just little, day to day kind of things. But in their own way, that’s kind of huge.

And so I am reminded once again of God’s goodness to me, and of my need to rest in that goodness. Because if I don’t take the time to rest, it will feel like things are dry… Even though the springs of refreshing are right around the corner. That’s worth remembering.

Maybe I just need to go take a drive, and find a spot to hang my hammock for an hour or two.

Question: Do you journal? Have you gone back and read your journal to remind yourself of what you’ve learned? You can leave a comment by clicking here.