Praise the Lord! Happy is the person who honors the Lord, who takes pleasure in obeying his commands. … He is not afraid of receiving bad news; his faith is strong, and he trusts in the Lord. He is not worried or afraid. [Psalm 112:1,7-8a (GNT)]
“Waiting for the other shoe to drop” is an idiom that comes from when people lived in city apartments in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were built so that bedrooms were placed one under another. Without much insulation, it was common to hear one’s upstairs neighbor remove his shoes. As one shoe dropped to the floor, the person below waited expectantly to hear the other thump. Thus, we use that phrase to mean we’re waiting for a seemingly inevitable, and usually undesirable, event.
As I read through yesterday’s devotion, I thought again of my granddaughter’s heart condition. Although she was treated for one disorder several years ago, the fix was temporary. Her cardiologists expect the problem to reappear sometime soon as adolescence approaches. Her other two cardiac defects will continue to worsen as she ages; eventually open heart surgery will be necessary. There are a variety of shoes just waiting to drop in her life: an enlarged heart, blood clots, stroke, cardiac arrest, and arrhythmias to name a few.
If we lived our days thinking of all of the horrible things that could possibly go wrong, none of us would ever leave bed in the morning. There’s plenty in life that can assault us: cancer, tornadoes, terrorist attacks, stroke, Alzheimer’s, car accidents, hurricanes, identity theft, flu, divorce, the loss of a job, poisonous spiders, venomous snakes, rejection, the sudden death of a spouse, Ebola, and lightning to name a few. While some are far more likely than others, we can’t allow fear to paralyze us or keep us from living our lives today. We can’t go through life anxiously waiting for misfortunes to materialize or disaster to strike.
Does our family worry and sit around anticipating the moment when that other shoe drops on our grand? Of course not! We joyfully celebrate each day we share with her and live that day to its fullest. We trust her future to God and her physicians. We’re not naive; we know there are no medical guarantees and that her future is uncertain. Our faith, however, is not. We know that God will provide us with everything we need to face whatever the future holds. We’ll follow the examples of Abraham, Moses, the disciples and Paul; we’ll step out in faith, one day at a time, one step at a time, and trust our unpredictable tomorrows to our trusted God and His divine plan.
Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God. [Corrie Ten Boom]
It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down. For the needs of today we have corresponding strength given. For the morrow we are told to trust. It is not ours yet. It is when tomorrow’s burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear. [George Macdonald]
Let us have confidence, then, and approach God’s throne, where there is grace. There we will receive mercy and find grace to help us just when we need it. [Hebrews 4:16 (GNT)]
