Ali Ballweg

In case anyone actually looks at this, I’m sorry for not posting anything in awhile.  I do have a valid excuse though.  My camera is ill.  Error 99 has taken over and there seems to be little hope  What is especially sad is that Fall is my favorite season for photography.  However, I’m engaged to a wonderfully generous man who has a 7D and I know for a fact that he will let me use his camera anytime I want  So, I promise to post both pictures and devotions again soon!

My friend Krista requested my presence at a Christmas present photo shoot for her neighbors’ baby Noah.  Here’s the little cutie

So.. God has been speaking into my life a lot about taking life step-by-step.  And I played a few games of my favorite game, Uno, last weekend.  As I was spending this awesome Friday night with my Father, He mixed these two together in my brain and what came to me was an analogy about life being like Uno!

“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.  God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” -Matthew 6:34 (The Message)

In Uno, you can only play one card at a time.  You can’t lay a yellow 2 and then lay that yellow 6 you have right away.  In life we can’t live today and tomorrow at the same time, however many of us try to.

And you really can’t plan much for future turns because you don’t know what card will be up when it’s your turn again.  In life we need to take each day step-by-step, focusing on the day in front of us.  Just like we have no idea what color will come up five turns from now, we don’t know where God will have us placed two years from now.

Oh and you know how sometimes you have three red cards when a red card is laid the turn before you?  And you kind of just have to make an educated guess about which card to lay down, knowing that you really just need to make a choice about which one to lay down?  Well that’s life- Sometimes we have several choices in front of us and instead of debating forever about which is the “right one,” we just need to choose one!

Sky and I were discussing the merits of Uno just last weekend and I think it requires some skill (more so than a game like War), but is mostly up to chance.  And I think living, and namely making decisions, requires some skill from us but is mostly out of our hands and in Gods.

I think it’s important to plan, prepare and think through decisions, however I often over-do these and God has shown me through this Uno analogy that I need to leave more in Gods hands.  And boy oh boy am I glad my life is in God’s hands and not up to me!