Friday, November 8, 2013

Perceptions

As I am winding up my life here on this Planet, my Father has me in a "choke hold" that I watched Doug, my deceased son endure many times in his climb up the ladder to be an All American in the brutal sport of wrestling. I had to leave the stadium more than once because I couldn't bear to watch his face turn purple, his muscles nearly burst through his skin and his eyes glaze over. This was my little boy (turning out to be tough as nails) who had grown up practicing on his dad and his younger brother while I left the room,  hoping they wouldn't maim each other for life.

 ...back to God's "choke hold" on me.  There remain dangling ends in relationships. ...unfinished business. I am a stubborn "finisher" by nature; a perfectionist. Many is the morning I have seen the sun come up in the east before I put a project to bed. Why did I stress so about finishing?

...but, again, back to the "choke hold". What's the message here? We can't change peoples' perceptions.  Only God can and He takes His own sweet time and so do people! I am slowly waking up to the probability that, as with the Hebrews 11 "Hall of Faith" people, I just may "die, not having received the Promise". Now, you theologians who read this need not write back to tell me that I missed His major point in that passage. You can't change my perception because I like mine better.

Mothers and grandmothers suffer. I think that in Heaven our Lord may (or may not)  explain what He was doing in our kids' and grandkids' lives when some of them seemed to have missed the "right way" sign and took the "wrong way" instead. We mothers and grandmothers are given a "way out", as promised in I Corinthians 10:13:  Trust God with all of our hearts and lean not to our own understanding.  Confession: I have always been a more aggressive "do-er" than an aggressive "pray-er". The "choke hold", therefore,  is also about this: God is patiently but lovingly forcing me to be  a "pray-er" and not so much a "do-er".

OLD HYMN: TRANSFORMED

Dear Lord, take up my tangled strands where I have wrought in vain
That by the skill of Thy dear hands some beauty may remain

Take all the failures, each mistake of my poor human ways
Then, Savior, for Thine own dear sake, make them show forth Thy praise

TRANSFORMED BY GRACE DIVINE, THE GLORY SHALL BE THINE
TO THY MOST HOLY WILL, O LORD;  I NOW MY ALL RESIGN

....and wasn't Billy Graham's last message to the world powerful?  I pray that millions of unbelievers came to Christ as the Gospel was so clearly revealed.   ...even on Fox News.

Love,  Jo

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