Devotion for the Week of May 27, 2007

Since I was on Vacation this week, I had time to read some of those things in my stack. A few years ago a friend gave me Max Lucado's book Next Door Savior and I came across this story below and I thought I would share it with you.

"A man and his dog are in the same car. The dog howls right-moon-in-the-middle- of-the-night caterwauling howls. The man pleads, promising a daily delivery of dog biscuit bouquets if only the hound will hush. After all, it’s only a car wash.
Never occurred to him—ahem, to me—that the car wash would scare my dog. But it did. Placing myself in her paws, I can see why. A huge, noisy machine presses toward us, pounding our window with water, banging against the door with brushes. Duck! We’re under attack.

“Don’t panic. The car wash was my idea.” “I’ve done this before.” “It’s for our own good.” Ever tried to explain a car wash to a canine? Dog dictionaries are minus the words brush and detail job. My words fell on fallen flaps. Nothing helped. She just did what dogs do; she wailed.

Actually, she did what we do. Don’t we howl? Not at car washes perhaps but at hospital stays and job transfers. Let the economy go south or the kids move north, and we have a wail of a time. And when our Master explains what’s happening, we react as if he’s speaking Yalunka. We don’t understand a word he says.
Is your world wet and wild? God’s greatest blessings often come costumed as disasters. Some of you doubt it. How can God use cancer or death or divorce?

Simple.

[God is] smarter than we are. He is to you what I was to four-year-old Amy. I met her at a bookstore. She asked me if I would sign her children’s book. When I asked her name, she watched as I began to write, “To Amy …”

She stopped me right there. With wide eyes and open mouth, she asked, “How did you know how to spell my name?”

She was awed. You aren’t. You know the difference between the knowledge of a child and an adult. Can you imagine the difference between the wisdom of a human and the wisdom of God? What is impossible to us is like spelling “Amy” to [God]. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isa. 55:9).

I keep taking Molly to the car wash. She’s howling less. I don’t think she understands the machinery. She’s just learning to trust her master.
Maybe we’ll learn the same.

Devotion for the Week of May 7, 2007

A few days ago I was looking at some old comic strip books such as Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, Garfield, and The Far Side.

One of the Garfield cartoons I saw has him resting, eyes half closed, in his bed thinking to himself: "One of my pet peeves is people who never finish what they start." The next panel shows him with his eyes wide open and a smile on his face saying, "I do not happen to be one of those people." The last panel shows him completely under the bed covers saying, "My philosophy is, 'Never start anything.'"

"Never start anything," cannot be our philosophy as God's people. We must care about our world because God cares. We must care about people because God cares. We must care about those in need because God cares. God cared enough about us to send a savior, His son, Jesus Christ.

We must care too. We must care enough to make our church and community stronger. We must care enough to make the world a better place to live. We are call by God to care.
What is God calling you to do? Are you being called to help a fellow student who is struggling with his or her education? Are you being called to be a Sunday School teacher? Are you being called to mentor young adults as they begin their careers? Are you being called to coach sports and teach the true meaning of teamwork and sportsmanship? Are you being called to organize a neighborhood watch program or cleanup day?

If you and I don't do it, who will? God is counting you and me. We also can count on God to give us the resources we need to accomplish God's will. These resources include the gifts and passions we have received through the grace of God. We have been given all our resources, ourselves, our time, our talents and our possessions for the betterment of the Kingdom of God. Even the education we receive comes about because of the resources God has given us.

By grace you have been saved - and raised up with Him and seated with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God - not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. (Ephesians 2: 4b-10)