Got any "cooked books"?

Since my knee surgery, sleep has frequently eluded me.  I lie awake a lot at night, just not totally comfortable, so I toss and turn until I find a comfortable position which allows me to finally drift off for a few more minutes sleep.  I guess I do this to myself, because I cannot seem to find the slowness of pace that keeps me from overdoing it sometimes.  I forget that my body is healing and launch into projects and tasks way beyond my level of rehabilitation at this point. Then I wonder why I am achy in the night hours!  Sometimes we lie awake because we do something, or are involved in something, which plays on our minds or bodies into the wee hours of the night.  At other times, it is what is done to us which gives us the unease and keeps us from finding the slumber we so desperately desire.  Either way, the end result is a restless night in bed, rumpled sheets, and a crazy hairdo!  Did you know that not one "toss" or "turn" escapes God's notice?  Not one tear escapes our eye which does not get captured in his record book - not one!

You’ve kept track of my every toss and turn through the sleepless nights, each tear entered in your ledger, each ache written in your book.  (Psalm 56:8 MSG)

Our aches are God's concern.  They could be purely physical simply because we have overdone it doing something we are ill-equipped to do, leaving our bodies feeling sore and fatigued.  They could be emotional, creating havoc for our physical bodies in response to the emotional upheaval we are experiencing.  Or they could be the response to holding onto stuff we were supposed to let go of long ago, but just could not see our way to actually release!  Either way, the tossing and turning comes - the aching of body, mind, soul, and spirit is there.  Not one of these moments escapes his watchful eye.  Not one of them is spared from recollection in his book of accounts over our lives.  

That may seem a little odd at first - God keeping a "ledger" book of sorts all about our lives.  In businesses everywhere, people keep sets of "books" which are ledgers of the assets owned, debt owed, and the like.  A ledger is simply a way of keeping record.  God frequently reminds us he cares so deeply for us that he keeps record of the stuff we would think was way too insignificant for him to even notice.  From keeping the count on the hair on our head, to the tears we shed in this lifetime, God has a record of all!  He doesn't "doctor the books" to make things look a little "too good" or "in his favor".  In fact, he records it like it is - the good, the bad, and the ugly.  

In time, as we see his action in our lives, the books aren't "doctored", but they do change.  In fact, we might start out with a whole lot of "debit" entries, making us appear to be continually in the "red" in our set of ledgers. Over the course of his tender care and watchfulness over our lives, we can begin to see these "debits" turn into "credits" on the opposite side of the ledger.  In time, he transforms what we thought was nothing more than a set of really lousy choices resulting in really lousy outcomes!  God is truthful in his accounting of our lives, but he is also faithful in his "management" of the end results of each lousy decision we have made!

There are things in our "books" which we are not proud of - wrong choices resulting in even worse actions, grudges held onto for years, bitterness which has rooted way too well to be easily uprooted, and the like.  Each of these "debit" entries are beyond our ability to "fix" on our own.  We try to "doctor" them up a little, making sure no one actually knows how much in "debt" we really are, but in truth, we cannot doctor the books of our lives forever! Eventually the truth will be known.  If we are in debt, regardless of the reason for that debt, wouldn't you think if a solution to our debt was offered to us we'd take it?  

In reality, we are offered a way out of the debt we have accrued - the only thing is that we need to transition the "book-keeping" responsibility for our lives over to God!  If we hold onto those "cooked books" forever, he cannot do the work of transformation we so desperately need and yearn for.  Isn't it about time we changed the "record-keeping" of our lives over to him and allow him to track what really matters, transform what we cannot, and get us finally "in the green"?  Just sayin!