I can. The children on the school bus have been crazy. The mayhem continues with Carolyn and a relationship calamity Monday during the day, that evening Lizzy cut her palm and finger when a Corelle plate exploded and at 3am Tuesday morning my Mother fell in her bedroom cutting her head and bruising her shoulder and arm. Did I tell you the moon is full?
Everybody is O.K. and recovering but it could drive a man to drink. Even a Baptist preacher whose last name is Pabst! Oh did I mention I was headed out of town for three days? I am trying to get done several days of work in one day and a half on Saturday. Did I mention the headache since I got up too? Yep, pile it on go ahead! That's the way we feel at times! Over our head overwhelmed by the weight of it all and all of it weighing at the same time.
How does a person of faith reconcile the life dilemma with the hope of faith? Well by belief, belief that God has your best at heart, belief that the tough times are the ones for our growth and HIS glory, belief that obedience leads to understanding instead of the other way around. Lastly, belief that WE WIN! Not so sure of the last part? Read Revelation chapters 21 and 22 the end of the story. We Win!
Paul writes of this belief in Romans 5:1-5 (NIV)
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
What this belief takes is action on our part. It is one thing to say the chair will hold me up. It is a completely different matter to sit in the chair trusting it to hold you up. In one of the opening scenes of The Patriot with Mel Gibson his character is a farmer and chair maker during the American Revolution. We see him testing an unfinished chair by sitting in it and rocking. His children are hidden in the shadows watching his activity when the chair collapses and he falls to the floor. In frustration he breaks the rest of the chair apart and throws it on the as yet unseen pile of previous failures. Someone had to sit in it. Our faith has to be tested to become a real living faith. But once is not enough. Our transformation is multifaceted and slow, over a life time slow. We have got to act on it and continue acting on it until Jesus comes. Perseverance produces character and character hope. Hope is what we need when there is a full moon!
Ah but this too shall pass. Life is a cycle, changing always moving towards the next season. The transformation of the saints is always moving forward as it is God who is our change agent. He just uses full moons to accomplish more of the change! Thanks be to Him that they only come every 28 days.
In HIS Service and Yours,
The Rev
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