Just Be Ready

Monday, January 7, 2013

"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that we would walk in them" (Eph. 2:10).

Hey Gang, about a thousand years ago, it seems that long ago (but then again I have never lived a thousand years, so I certainly do not know how it feels to live a that long)!

But, I was the ‘only unemployed director of a non-existent boys home’.  I had reached the point where I felt it was time for me to join the world of reality and become a provider  for my family and get a regular job.

Does that mean that I had given up on what I thought God had said to me, two years before in California, and driven the point home when he sold our home in a very miraculous way?

 Sometimes, but not really!  I did know that he honed Moses for forty years in the wilderness as a sheep herder before he called him to take on the task of leading a million or so complaining Jews to the land of "milk, and honey". Now keep in mind that Moses had all the best training available in the world as the adopted son of Pharaoh.

 I had no such training. I came to the conclusion that, if it took forty years to prepare Moses, who had already done great things, it would probably take me two or three hundred years to be honed for action. But, you all know that God does not work that way.  I interviewed at a child-care facility and they turned me down because I had too many children.  I learned there was a critical need for a maintenance man at a mission in Haiti and was turned down because I was over-qualified.  I even tried to sign on as a farm hand and was turned down because I didn't  know which end of the cow milk came from.   

Do you think I might have asked myself more than once, “Am I reading the signs wrong?”  Was it just a figment of my imagination that God was going to use me to help young lives in His Name? 

Do you think it began to eat at the root of my faith and surfaced all the feelings of unworthiness that I had tucked away in my heart and mind?  Have you ever reached a point in your life where you were ready to "chuck it all" and God would not let you?

Two years of agony and pain, questions, misgivings!  Two years of feeling that I had failed my duties as provider for my family!  Two years of wanting to run from what I thought was God's calling!  And then the light began to seep through my "stinking- thinking".  A tiny chunk of Solomon's wisdom began to creep into my mind, "There is an appointed time for everything. And then a time for every event under heaven" (Ecc. 3:1). 

In these times of woe and disappointment in our country, I have once again been drawn to the words of Habakkuk where he gave us words of hope when we feel the sky is falling. 

Notice his counsel to us, "For the vision is yet for the appointed time; It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail.  Though it tarries, wait for it; For it will certainly come, it will not delay" (2:3). 

Soooo, good friends and neighbors, are you struggling this morning? Not sure you are on track with Abba Father?  Well, take it from an old salt and note what Isaiah said to us a few years back, "In a favorable time I will answer you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you" (k49:8).

Blessings,  

Gramps