I have been standing in the waiting room of a clinic for an hour now. I am to be checked in for an operation. The room is overcrowded and the stream of people in need seems never to end. There is so much distress, sickness, infirmity, pain. Some people stare ahead of them, dejected; others try to distract themselves with gossip magazines about celebrities and their affair-filled lives; a woman is weeping and will not be comforted.

Suddenly I ask myself: what am I actually doing here? As a child of the almighty God, should I not be exempt from pain and sickness? Am I not a daughter of the heavenly Father? Has He overlooked me? Why is this happening to me? I do not belong here!

An old, very familiar feeling creeps over me again: I am standing on a platform. Everyone boards, the train departs, and I am left behind all alone. An oppressive feeling. A feeling of missing the most important thing. These thoughts annoy me. I feel the pressure and the tension inside me. I call myself to order, because I know how important it is to stay spiritually clear and level-headed in such situations.

But my thoughts start going back and forth again. Could God have forgotten me after all? This surely cannot be the right way for me. Certainly not. It simply cannot be.

I push myself away from the wall I had been leaning against for so long. I simply have to walk a few steps. But no sooner am I moving than my eyes fall on a picture beside which I had been standing and which I had simply overlooked until now. My suitcases are standing directly beneath it. I had been so focused and fixated on my situation, the problems, the circumstances, that I had not noticed it at all. It is a colorful picture. And only one short sentence is written on it.

Yet this one sentence touches me to the very core:

“He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake!”

God has more for you!