I must confess that I have been avoiding my blog site this past week. Not because there is nothing on my mind, but rather because I have been so aware of all the ‘bad stuff’ going on in this world and I didn’t want to write a sad or negative blog!!
On a personal level, several friends are dealing with cancer, or dealing with extreme marriage issues, or battling depression, loss of jobs, or incomes below poverty level. Apart from God’s direct intervention, any one of these people could be feeling utter hopelessness!! And that doesn’t even address the national and international crises that are prevalent today.
Last week, I was sitting in the Louisville airport waiting for Jamie to pick me up. I had a book on my lap, although I was staring off into space. Suddenly, I was aware – in my peripheral vision - of a child laughing and running in a circle around a woman who appeared to be his grandmother. My attention was drawn to his mom saying good-bye to his dad. It seemed that Mom, Grandma, Grandpa, and the little boy were taking a trip.
The little boy was running and laughing and, suddenly, I became aware. His left leg was a flesh colored prosthetic with a brand-new tennis shoe on the foot and his right leg was one of those ‘titanium, bionic looking legs’ with a matching shoe. He seemed oblivious. And then, I noticed, as he grabbed his grandma’s shoulder bag and wound it around her, he had no hands!! Just rounded stumps above the wrists! Again, he was delightedly oblivious. What a picture of things far surpassing a little boy with no hands and feet!!
Are we able to delight in the joys of God in the midst of dark circumstances? Are we able to say, “This is my life and I know ‘My Redeemer Lives!'?” Are we able to rejoice that we have new strength (legs) which enables us to run as we were never able to before? Can we get to the point beyond the response of, “Oh, that’s so easy for you to say!!” That place where, like Joni Erickson Tada, we see that, apart from this circumstance, we would not comprehend the all-sufficient grace and power in our lives of the One who makes all things new? Oh, I know, I’m wading in deep, deep waters right now. Waters that are as far away as the Indian Ocean is from our mid-American homes to those who have only ‘inch-deep’ interest or even no interest in the amazing and personal God of the universe.
I don’t pretend to have a strong grasp on this ‘place beyond.’ But I am seeing it . . . perhaps most vividly in the lives of those friends I mentioned earlier! As Sam Storms writes in his chapter of the edited book of essays called, For the Fame of God’s Name, “We are talking here about a deep, (not superficial or merely surface), durable (it sustains you in the worst of times, no less than in the best of times) delight (not merely duty or following God out of a sense of moral obligation) in the splendor of God (not in the stuff or goodies or achievements that occupy so many today) that utterly ruins you for anything else.” (p. 60)
And, so, this is the preoccupation of my mind these days!!
Next time,
Karol
