Update:
I had a good time shooting my bow with Ryan on Friday morning. I got delayed getting ready by several phone
calls, so I was still trying to decide what to wear when Ryan arrived. He quipped that “this was like waiting when
you pick up a girl.” Then after he had
to load all of my stuff in his truck, my bow, a stool, my backpack, something
to prop my leg up in the car, and my wheelchair, I responded, “and I pack like
one too.” (Sorry ladies, just a bit of
male humor). It was nice to get out of
the house and do something that I normally do.
An added benefit was I connected with Brian while I was there. Brian is an employee of Mouldy’s whom I’ve
known casually for years. Brian is a
double amputee. He also lost part of his
hand and has had multiple skin grafts.
He was able to encourage me and give me some advice. He has a very positive attitude and a smile
that covers his entire face. Best of all
he gave me his phone number and told me to call any time.
David and Josh, two of my sons, took me out to the State Theatre on
Friday night to see my wife’s play, “Knights of the Round Table.” Once again, an awesome performance, beautiful
set and a great performance by the cast and crew. The battle scene at the castle wall was the
best! I was impressed by everyone’s
performance! One daughter and son-in-law
were in the play. A daughter-in-law did
everyone’s stage makeup. One of my sons took all the still photography. Congratulations to my wife, the writer and
director. Two performances left!
Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m.
And then it’s “Strike the set!” I
get to see my wife again next week, “Yeah!”
I was notified that the part I ordered over three weeks ago for my
wheel chair has arrived. Adam, a friend
from church, who used to be in the durable medical equipment business, picked
it up and should be by to install it on my chair on Saturday. It’s an amp board, used to hold my leg up so
I don’t have to prop it up on chairs. It
is crazy that it’s taken over three weeks to arrive. I was told that was fast because I paid out
of pocket for it. If it had gone through
insurance it probably would have taken three months…that’s just crazy! I was told it is so slow because with so much
insurance fraud, they place tons of safeguards in the system. Okay, I had a temporary solution for my
waiting period but what about people with needs that are truly dependent upon
the medical equipment that they need?
What do they do? I don’t know if
you can fix the system until you “fix” the people who cheat the system.
Ruth and Cody (daughter and son-in-law) were delayed by weather and did
not come up from Chicago Friday night.
Hopefully they can make the drive on Saturday and catch Karen’s
play. I am glad that they made the
choice to delay their travel and to stay safe.
Thought for the Day:
In his book “If God is Good; Why Do We Hurt?” Randy Alcorn tells this
story: “Before my mother made a cake, she would lay the ingredients on the
kitchen counter. One day I decided to
experiment. I tasted each ingredient of a
chocolate cake. Baking powder. Baking
soda. Raw eggs. Vanilla extract. I
discovered that most of what goes into a cake tastes terrible by itself. But a remarkable metamorphosis took place
when my mother mixed all those ingredients in the right amounts and baked them
together. The cake tasted
delicious. In a similar way, each trial
and apparent tragedy tastes bitter to us.
But God carefully measures out and mixes all those ingredients together,
and in the end He will present to us a wonderful and perhaps unexpected
goodness.”
Romans 8:28 “And we know that in all things
God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to
his purpose.”
I’ve written about this verse before so I don’t need to remind you that
this verse doesn’t say that everything that happens to us is good. What it does promise is that God can take
everything that life throws at us and ultimately use it for some good purpose. It may be years after the event. The good purpose my not even benefit us
personally. But God can use it. Isn’t it nice to know that no matter how difficult
or painful our experience is, God can put it to some positive use? He can take a bad event, meant to harm us or
destroy us, and find some redeeming value in it. That makes it a bit less painful to take when
we realize there is some good that will come as a result of what we face.
So I want to encourage you.
Whatever you are facing; whatever you have endured; whatever you will experience
in the future—God will put it to use in some positive fashion. What you face is not a sign of God’s
displeasure with you; He isn’t punishing you; The Lord God hasn’t forgotten
you.
Like a child not understanding the purpose of putting nasty tasting
baking powder into a cake, so we may not understand why certain things
necessarily happen to us. Although we
don’t understand, we trust Betty Crocker and we trust our mom to make some
delicious; so too it should be with God and the events of our lives.
Another illustration comes to mind: the old MacGyver TV program
starring Richard Dean Anderson as a resourceful secret agent. MacGyver got into all sorts of trouble and
usually ended up captured or locked up somewhere. You never knew how he was going to get out of
the bad situation; but you knew that by the end of the show he would be free. Usually, he fabricated his escape from common
and rather innocent things that he found.
Putting them together created just the tool that he needed to
escape. In every episode he had to MacGyver
it to accomplish his mission.
God takes the common things in our lives and puts them together in such
a fashion as to accomplish His mission. In
the MacGyver TV show, people never understood why MacGyver wanted the object he
requested from them; but he knew and had a perfect plan. That is exactly what is happening in both
your life and in mine. We get into
situations and we don’t know what good that any of these things can accomplish. But God has a plan and will use whatever He
finds to accomplish His mission.
Now does this make all the painful, horrible, evil things that happen
to us and around us in the world good—absolutely not. It doesn’t make them pleasant or easy to take
either. They are what they are. But behind all of it, we take a degree of
comfort knowing that somehow and in some way, God will put it to good use. And that is enough for us to accept it and to
bear up under it, knowing it is not entirely meaningless and without purpose.
May God give you strength to endure whatever is set before you. Remember that you are not experiencing these
things because God has deserted you or because He is mad at you. He is there with you each step of the
way. He feels your pain. He cares.
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