Life Matters - November 6th, 2024

On November 5th of this week Sadie and I embarked on our 44th trip around the sun on this spinning orb—together. Yes…we just passed our 43rd wedding anniversary as we tied the proverbial knot on November 5, 1981. Afterward the excitement of being married to the love of my life was subdued at times by an insecure uneasiness about being able to provide for my beautiful young bride, and not only for her, but also for the children that were sure to come. 

So, in my heart I made a covenant back in the day; ‘’I will provide for my family or die trying.’’  

Going on 30 years later I almost did. Die trying, that is. 

Still, I have never regretted that covenant desire of being a provider, that commitment to being a man. I’ve stumbled, I’ve fallen, (both metaphorically and literally) I’ve been knocked down and lifted up, scorned and praised, loved by the lovely and hated by the hateful, rebuked by the loving and flattered by those who proved unworthy of trust, heard positivity and positively negative, been torn down and given words of affirmation. 

Having said all that I can still say that upwards in the 99 percent range of interactions with people have been positive. Even the 1 percent have been good, some brought joy to me when they came, and some when they went! Seriously though, communication is always the best route even when it is hard.  

By God’s grace there has always been provision and with time I learned to trust Him more and more to provide a way to be a provider. God, after all, is the ultimate Provider. Both physically and spiritually. And with time the children God gave us become more helpful than needy, blessing us in so many ways.  

As always, I’m glad to get past Halloween. And no, I’m not referring to the Harris campaign for U.S. President. As her initial short-lived run on ‘’love’’ and ‘’joy’’ descended into the throes of name-calling and finger-pointing. At one person in particular, even after the second attempt on his life, and after being warned that her hateful political rhetoric could incite more of the same. Trumpian personal hyperbole morphed into Harris’ political  hypocrisy steeped in a kind of ‘’trick or treat’’ emotional strategy. 

Hopefully, and prayerfully, the inciting to violence will now stop as November 5th, 2024 recedes into the annals of history.  

As for Halloween being past, we can now look forward to our next holiday, (and I think it’s my favorite) Thanksgiving Day! What better way can there be to live life than to live a life of thanks giving?  Surely there is none. Thankfulness is a taste of Heaven that makes adversity more doable. At times it may feel like Heaven itself is fairly bursting with joy and pleasure in the sunny rays of love shining into our heart, mind, and life. At other times it may simply provide us a safe and restful place in the midst of the hard things the devil, the world, or both, throw at us as darts, with our life being as a dartboard. Have we not all been on the dartboard end of those darts? Have we not all been guilty of throwing darts? Have we not all been in need of repentance at times? Have we not all been in need of the healing ‘’balm of Gilead’’ when the darts of this present world have laid us open?  

Thankfulness is the overwhelming response to that healing balm of Jesus being administered to the wounds of pain. Thankfulness is the overwhelming response to again and again experiencing God’s faithfulness, to being a recipient of His Love. 

Focusing on this present world and its doings instead of ultimately focusing on Christ and His kingdom is a shaky business indeed. Focusing on Christ and His everlasting Kingdom brings temporal things of this present world into proper perspective. Jesus Lives!  

The morning of November 6, 2024 feels like a new dawn for America! We are witnesses of the most impressive political comeback in American history! Perhaps ever. Donald J. Trump has survived left-wing hatred fueled and “legitimized” by mainstream media operatives and the media-exploited hatred of a U.S. presidential ‘’regime’’ attempting to evolve (devolve) American politics into a WOKE-minded, feeling-oriented, twisted caricature of its founder’s intentions. 2nd-time President-elect Donald Trump was excoriated mercilessly by left-wing puppeteers and puppets from the day he stepped out of Trump Tower and announced his run for U.S. President. The emotional beatings only escalated once in the Oval Office and have continued to this day. May they now cease. And not only cease, but our hearts and minds remain, or return and remain, to the stability of God and His Word. Lest we get caught up in a new, a more hidden, danger. 

When the apostle Paul was sent to Rome by King Agrippa to appear before Caesar (Paul having appealed his case to the high court) his captors took him aboard a ship and set sail across the Mediterranean. Getting caught in a storm that just wasn’t letting up they lost all hope of saving the ship and when they saw land one fateful morning they hoisted the mainsail and ‘’made toward shore.’’ The ship was driven by the wind into a place where two seas met, the ship run aground and then whipped and broken open by the violence of the waves. (Acts chapter 27) As Paul had prophesied, they all escaped to land. 

The land was an island called Melita, occupied by barbarians, who received the sea-faring stragglers kindly, building a fire to ward off the cold, and the wet, from cold sea and rain. 

The fire heated a viper hidden in the dark confines of firewood. It slithered out, struck at Paul by the fire and latched onto his hand. The barbarians, being barbarians, felt (yes, felt) that Paul must be a murderer, who, though he had escaped the sea, ‘’yet vengeance suffereth him not to live.’’ 

But when Paul didn’t die, nor even swell, when he should have, the barbarians changed their tune and reasoned that he must be a god.  

Feelings are fickle, undulating as the waves of the sea, unless tuned into, and stabilized, by God and His Word.  

As God keeps this spinning orb tracking in its yearly orbit around the sun, let us remember the instruction of James 4:15, ‘’For that ye ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will do this or that.’’ Let us worship God in spirit and in Truth.   

Life Matters!