Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
~ Romans 5:1-5
Sometimes we don't see the miraculous. Sometimes we have a rough day. Sometimes rough would be an improvement. It's hard to do, but changing our focus can help so much. The truth is that every day more goes right than wrong for most of us. But it's also easy for me to ignore 1000 little things that I take for granted and put all my energy into the pain caused by, worry about and or self pity over the one or two major things that went wrong.
The day before yesterday served as a good reminder of my frequent failure in this area. The day started hard on almost no sleep with feelings of loss and hurt because of my not having something I wanted for the vast majority of my life. God has said no, and usually I'm OK with that. Sometimes though I am not, and yesterday I struggled to get back to OK. My mother was rear ended. I lost time that I planned on using for final preparations for the sermon I was to give. I had several phone calls when I needed a few minutes of peace and quiet. I got behind schedule due to everything going on. I got even further behind when one of the two people that needed a ride to church didn't give good directions to where to pick them up. I ended up sitting in the back of the church and crying for most of the praise and worship portion of the meeting. The description of my latest really rough day.
But let's look at it a little differently. I did get enough rest to be able to function. I woke up, and my back wasn't hurting all that much. I felt that loss I mentioned, but I also knew where to go with my hurt and pain. The Lord ministered comfort to me, and this last bout over the issue didn't mess me up nearly as bad as the time before. I was able to use what I was going through as inspiration for an Unshackled Moment. My motorcycle started. I had a nice ride to work. I only worked a half day, giving me more time to prepare to preach than I expected, so what I lost later didn't leave me totally unprepared. My wife gave me some great hugs and cared so much about what I was going through. My mother is OK, and the car is too. I made it do church on time and was able to help make sure others got there. I was a help to my father. The worship was good, and God met me there as I poured out my pain and anger and bad attitude onto the altar. God gave the grace to preach and let go of the day. I got to visit with my family. I got to cuddle and spend time with Leah. I had a mini marathon of a show I like as part of the unwinding for the evening. I had a delicious lengua burrito for dinner that was very satisfying. I had no problems getting the sermon ready to post. I made it to bed before midnight and got a little rest without having prison dreams. All in all a pretty good day. It could've been even better had I not had an anger melt down less than an hour before preaching, but I am so grateful to God who is faithful to forgive.
Where we put the energy of our attention does effect how we experience the world. We're like the man in the Footsteps poem who can't realize that he's been carried until he looks back and only sees one set of tracks. He even wrongly thinks he walked alone until Jesus points out he was carried. When we focus on our self pity and the negative it's easy to feel alone and ignored by God, like everything is wrong and getting worse. But if we could turn our eyes to Jesus we would realize that we are floating safely through the storm. The storms will come, rain will fall and the wind will blow. It's going to happen. But if we can look to Jesus during those times, we can use the hurricane winds to drive us more quickly into the arms of the Comforter and the presence of the Lord. Sometimes a bad day can be the best thing that could possibly happen. Anything that brings us closer to God is something to rejoice about. That is why we can rejoice even in suffering.
No comments:
Post a Comment