Friday, October 30, 2009

Got Poop?


Lessons Learned in a Recession # 2: Power & Light

We've all heard the phrase, "Hindsight is always 20/20," meaning that once we live through an experience, it makes more sense or we realize how we could have done things differently. From a faith perspective, the phrase also includes an understanding of how God accomplishes his will and purposes through events that take place. That's one of the great things about the bible stories. We get to see how things end up. It's like we travel through time and see how the pieces fit together, even though things might have seemed pretty lousy for those living through it.

The thing that amazes me about my own limited perspective is that, even though I know God always has purpose for the poop that life brings, I still tend to wallow around in that poop wondering if there really is a purpose and wondering what it could be. It doesn't matter that I've done this poop wallowing hundreds of times before and that, almost every time, I could eventually see how things worked out for the best. Or, at the least, I later came to a point of trusting that God was doing something I couldn't see or sense at the time; that he was at work in hidden ways. I know these truths quite well, but when I'm in the poop, I still wonder and wallow.

This week we study two people who handled life's lousy events far better. Bartimaeus was a blind man who cried out to Jesus even when others told him to shut up. What made him so strong and persistent? And then there was Elisha who was surrounded by enemy soldiers ready to kill him. But he was sure of victory, though he had only one frightened servant with him. He was confident something else was going on. No wallowing with these guys. That means, of course, there are some beautiful things we can learn from them.

Got poop? Bring it on Sunday and we'll all see what God does with it.

- Curtis