- Not The Only One!
- Post # 78
- 04 May 23
- ” A Great Gift ”
- Howdy!
- Welcome once more. I have a few open post like all the time, and many times, something out of nowhere pushes them aside, but this is one that was open, and I was hoping to finish and get published. Well I believe that most of us have many, many blessings in our lives. Some that we overlook, some that we don’t particularly care for, some that we are completely clueless about, and maybe some that we fall down on our knees and thank God for each and every day. I think that one of the greatest and best blessings in our lives is family. Yes, I know often it may be filled with or a place of dysfunction and that is because we are all broken people and it’s hard to be functional if and when we are broken. I mean like, we see it all through out the Bible and it’s rarely dressed or framed in a way that it is something that you would want to seek after. Let’s just take a look at a few. How would you feel if your wife couldn’t have children and she told you to go make a baby with someone else….awkward…right? , or how about having your son hunt you down like a dog, because he wanted your thrown, and I’m not talking about the porcelain one.☺️☺️. Another one, let’s talk about tricking your father in law into sleeping with you, to prove that he wasn’t an honorable man. One more just for good measure, two daughters getting their father drunk so he would impregnate them, talking about the hangover from hell☺️☺️. I think if you look at a few well documented cases of dysfunction, you are probably starting to feel pretty good about your own situation and thank God, that we don’t have any of that going on. Well, we live in the age of probabilities, so if by some extremely odd reason your family situation resembles any of that, I’m sorry,! get out and seek professional help quickly. Again as human beings, our families usually has something from sibling rivalries, or parents having a favorite, and they should know better, but we are all aware of the highly favored son or daughter, and us prodigals can definitely self identify , as well ☺️☺️. Your family may be fractured by divorce, or has a long line of abuse or marred by alcoholism or some other addiction, but nonetheless these are the people who you share genes with. Now, when it comes to extended family, has there ever been a family without a weird aunt or uncle. You know the ones, who has that off centered sense of humor, that you wish that they weren’t sharing with your five year old☺️☺️. All joking aside family is a huge blessing, regardless as to how they may shake out on the normal meter. After God it should be your spouse, if you are blessed with one, then your family, followed by your job, career, or chosen profession. This is where we often get into trouble, by just simply having things out of order. If you lie to yourself and tell yourself that you spend so much time at work providing for your family, I will come right out and tell you that is the wrong answer. We may have a season of that ,but that shouldn’t be where you are living all of time, constantly missing from pictures, ball games, and family dinners, after all if you aren’t there, then the family is incomplete. The other side of the equation is if you are putting your children before your spouse, again, the wrong answer, again, we may have season of that, but that should not be where you are living all of the time, because once the kids grow up and move away, you will find yourself living with a stranger. And if you are putting anything before God, then that is the perfect storm for heading over the cliff, and I’m not talking about base jumping ☺️☺️. The Blessing can be an endless parade of God’s favor and goodness in your life. If you are healthy, thank God for the blessing of that, because a lot of people don’t have that. If your children are healthy, thank God, because a lot of people don’t have that either. If you have a roof over your head and a bed to sleep in, thank God, again, a lot of people don’t have that. I think that the more we are blessed, the more likely we are to take those things for granted . We don’t just take it for granted, but we complain about the blessing as well. Gotta get up and go to work! Well prior to Covid, probably a ton of people just wishing to take that job from you ☺️☺️, nonetheless still very much a blessing to be employed. If you have a spouse , who loves you , and is faithful and you can talk about anything together, even those really hard things, thank God, because, a lot of people don’t have that either. Just forget about sleeping alone, but if you are in a marriage, where trust has been broken and no signs of it reappearing in the near future and you can’t have those really hard conversations, that is the complete opposite of a blessing, but I know that some of you are living there. Some of you have special needs children and you wonder what will happen, when you aren’t around to take care of them anymore, and I want to say that is a mixed blessing, or as my friend from the Midwest calls bitter/ sweet. You have the opportunity to love them ,but there is also the fear of an uncertain future. So, again I say if you have healthy children, it is a blessing. I believe that children are a gift from God, but we must remember that they belong to Him, and that they are only on loan to us, as a resource to enrich our lives as we hopefully get to train them in the way that they should go. More and more, I know of and hear stories of parents burying their children, yes deep, deep waters to be walking through. I wish that I could tell you that I understood why God allows certain really hard things to touch our lives. He doesn’t cause them, but sometimes He chooses to sit silent in them,, and I truly do believe that it is for a greater good, even when we can’t see it, or even slightly come along side of that. I know that He shares in our pains and sufferings, and wishes to comfort us. The Word of God says that His ways are so much higher than ours, so we must consider the possibility that there are things way beyond our comprehension. I will tell you that there are just hurting people all around us every day. Just yesterday I stopped into the place where I buy my morning coffee and the lady that normally rings me up, Ms. Pat, she had been missing for a few weeks, and I had asked where she was, I was told she was taking care of her sick mother, so when I saw her , I inquired about her mom, and she just broke down crying, because she had just buried her the week before. There is the sad story of the couple who has multiple children in heaven waiting to meet them do to miscarriages, but not one that they can hold in their arms. Sometimes you question both God’s sovereignty and His purposes ,when you see little one’s who have had dozens of surgeries in the first year of their lives , just to survive. I don’t own a crystal ball or any cognitive skills in that arena,, but I know somehow God uses all of our tragic stories for good. I mentioned about my friend Steve before who lost his son in a drug deal gone bad, but out of that tragic lost ,I have seen so many blessings that have come out of that situation, just to numerous to count , and the pinoicale has been a thriving grief share ministry at their church, where they have helped hundreds of people process and to hopefully heal from their lost. On the surface, far, far away from anything that resembles some kind of blessing. I could never answer the question as to whether they would trade one for the other, that is a ridiculous premise, I know that they loved their son and I’m sure that there are days when they miss him more than others, but there has been a greater good. I am aware of the pains of divorce first hand, but out of that painful situation, God has given me tremendous wisdom to encourage others to maybe take another path. I can testify of God’s faithfulness through , cancer, Parkinson, dementia, wayward children, or just an elderly parent slipping away just a little more every day. There is and has never been a shortage of suffering in the world. I want to encourage all of you to look for those unique and ever so special blessings, such as the twinkle in a child’s eye on Christmas morning. It could be a parent who is dealing with memory lost, but on your last visit there was clarity, where they recognized you and remembered that you were their child, even if it was only for a few minutes, or what seemed like a brief instance. There are blessings in disguise, and down the road, we may get to see, why God didn’t allow You to marry a certain person, or move to a certain place, or take a particular job. We often are to tied to what we can see, touch or feel, our senses and emotions can often deceive us into thinking that certain things are good for us, when in actuality they can be very harmful and destructive. It could be that relationship,, or certain people whom you have allowed in Your circle, or maybe some dark habit that only You and God know about. I’m often reminded that fire can be used to refine things or us , but it can also be all consuming and a devastating force and believe it or not, I think that we get a say in that. It is an almost universal truth that we can not control some or most of the things that happen to us, but we can absolutely control one hundred percent of how we choose to respond to what happens to us. My pastor the other day was talking about that old movie ” Ground Hog Day”, with Bill Murray. Do you ever feel like you are living the same day over and over again? Is our response the same, or do we learn something to change the narrative or to flip the script? I think this is particularly true in our relationships . If you are married, you may continuously respond to your spouse in the wrong way or with the wrong love language and you are wondering why they are looking at you like Mr. Spock with one raised eye brow☺️☺️. If you are single, then perhaps you continue to draw the same wrong kind of guys or girls to your dating world. You may think to yourself, is that all that is out there? Well, maybe it’s you , that needs to change what you are bringing to the table. Maybe to put it in a fresh light, people sometimes seek God and ask Him for a fresh revelation, when they haven’t received or acted upon the last six revelations that He shared with them…your very own personal Ground Hogs day☺️☺️. This is supposed to be about A great gift, but just how special is it for you to receive something that has consistently and constantly eluded you? I think that many things in life come down to perspective. If we are honest we have all seen or experienced some kind of tragedy or disappointment in life , that could have been far worse than it was, not saying that it wasn’t tragic in itself, but it could have been far, far worse than whatever it was. If you work in some kind of factory and you loose a finger to a piece of equipment, you can’t tell me that you wish that it was your entire hand that you lost. The difference between what was and what it could have been is a blessing or a gift, perhaps a little over simplistic. Again, view point can be a huge determination for your piece of mind, and mental health. We constantly worry about things , that a little ways down the road seems so insignificant or very unimportant . I will go one further here and say that if you know God, then worry is the absence of faith. Worry and faith are Diametrically opposed to one another and can not exist simultaneously in the same arena of your brain. It’s the whole serving two masters thing with a twist. It can’t be done or sustained on any real level. We all have to choose, who’s house we are going to live in. I am by no means telling you that I have mastered this , but I know it to be true and I have seen it in others, who are probably a lot more sold out to God then I am . I have seen people walk through all sorts of things in life, and the expression on their faces, says, come what may,! and they are never disturb by life in the least, because they trust that God has all things in His control. Yes, that is a process and part of the journey, that I haven’t fully realized, but I’m on my way. This is where this post originated . My daughter has just been so amazing to me, that in her young thirties in some ways is so much closer to this, than I am. The last couple of years, her and her husband, well actually the whole family has walked through some challenges, and just when you get through one thing, something else pops up, because that is just how life works, and I want to say, if you haven’t or don’t have challenges in your life, I believe that You probably have zero growth in your life. Yes, your savings account could be fat, and your 401k is blossoming just nicely, and you may even take fabulous vacations,, but the question remains, who are you without those things, because, while you may not be able to phantom it, those things can evaporate in the blink of an eye. Who or what do you turn to then?, when it just hits the fan? This can be a crisis of faith and I believe even atheist pray to some unknown faceless gods , when things unexpected take a downward turn in life. This is why I think this is the best gift, when something goes full circle. The faith that was shared and deposited in me is now invested in my kid. There is just something about watching and truly knowing that your kids get it. There faith is legitimately their owns. As in haven taking ownership of it as they walk through life and trials. Ashley leading the charge with her family, makes me proud, so very proud, but I take no confidence in anything that I have done, but truly it is all about God and all that He has done and accomplished. If you don’t know Him , He is the giver of every good thing that you have in your life. And while I see this generational torched being passed as an incredible gift to me, its not the best gift. The best gift was given some two thousand years ago in a place called Bethlehem and it came as a little baby, who was born for one specific reason, and that was to save us from our sins, to save us from ourselves and the wrath of God. He said it is finished!!, Done!!! Caput!! End of story!
- Till Next Time ✌️ peace!
- Sandy The Southerner
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