I Don't Get It!

Jesus replied, “You don’t understand now what I am doing, 

but someday you will.”

John 13:7

Ever had something happen and you thought, "What the....?"  God seems to do things and allow things that we don't understand.  

At the time, I didn't understand why God allowed me to have open heart surgery at the ripe old age of 43.  But NOW I believe that, had I not had the surgery, Eric Skidmore would not have come to visit and plant the seed in my mind to become a Law Enforcement Chaplain.

At the time, I didn't understand why God would let me screw up life so many times without giving up on me.  But NOW I believe that each time I screwed up, I learned something that can be used to help others now.

At the time, I didn't understand why God would let me be so miserable while I was working for a church.  After all, aren't church folk supposed to be all nice, wonderful, kind, supportive and not be judgmental?  NOW I believe that God was showing me how NOT act.  

I don't always understand the "whys" and "wherefores" and the "are you kidding me" events of life, but God is the one with the plan, and He has a part for me to play in this plan, and for that I am pretty okay with (most of the time).  

Do I still wonder "What the...?"  Absolutely!    

Do I still question? You bet I do!

Do I still not "get it" sometimes?  Oh Yeah!

But I know, eventually it will make sense to me.  Usually when I've stopped wondering so hard about it.  

Ever Feel Overwhelmed?

 "Little children, you are from God and have overcome the world, 

for He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world."

~1 John 4:4

What happens when you have something out of the ordinary happen?  Let's say you are struggling to make it from paycheck to paycheck and one your way to work smoke starts gushing from under the hood of the car.  While you are standing on the side of the road wondering if your day could possibly get any worse, the rain starts and your umbrella is at work.  When you finally manage to get a ride home, you walk in drenched and dripping all over the floor when your child decides this would be the best possible time to start throwing up. You know the day, the one where if you don't drink, you seriously consider taking up drinking as an occupation.

Think about this for a moment:  Our enemy's job is to make us ineffective, since he cannot take God's children from God's hand.  And one of the ways he makes us ineffective is to overwhelm us.  Sun Tzu, who wrote "The Art of War", stated: “The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.”  So you see, if our enemy can overwhelm us, we take our focus off of God, and even doubt God, and we do not even consider the enemy's true intent.

My prayer is that, when (not if) the storms begin to rage, we will learn to cling to the God who speaks the storms into submission and calms the raging seas.