You’re driving to an important meeting and suddenly police reroute you onto some crowded backstreet. You cuss. C’mon, God heard you. Well… He’s heard me. I admit, I like predictability, a lot. I don’t like curve balls. But my wife and I were thrown a bender with the fire that broke out at our home during the first Stronghold Ministry tea (More about the fire in our Stronghold Ministry March 2009 newsletter). It was a small attic fire from a recessed light fixture overheating. No one got hurt, but water and fire fighting techniques totaled the kitchen. Now we are living in a hotel with our dog.
As with road detours, handling life detours is all about attitude. For now I am positive and flexible with this inconvenience. But I have been through tough times with me before and I can really whine. So I ask for your prayers for a rapid return home and chirpiness for me.
Upside: We get a new kitchen. I would probably be more excited about this if I were in there more.
The best upside: At the rescheduled tea, hopefully more people will hear the good news of God’s amazing ability to hold us up in crisis. When the fire broke out, our speaker, Chris Forbes, was sharing how helpless she and her family felt after the spread of her cancer. I felt helpless while watching firemen whack away at our ceiling and walls and flooding the kitchen. But these events go to our core message at Stronghold: though we are out of control, He is in control. Still, I sometimes find myself wishing this truth could be embraced more academically and less experientially, if you know what I mean. Can’t I just sign an affidavit? “I really do agree that God is in control even when it seems like He is not. Signed, Joe.” Lesson mastered. But no, this lesson must be lived deeply.
Millions of people feel helpless about their cancer or crisis. Would they, would I, turn to the Lord as much without trials which bring me “to the end of myself”? My strength and wisdom fail and His begins. “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). So life, fire away, just try to get me there on time.
