Then call on me when you are in trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will give me glory. [Psalm 50:15 (NLT)]
Sign painted on the side of a plumber’s truck: “We repair what your husband tried to fix!”
My husband managed to track tar into the house on the bottom of his shoes. Unfortunately, he tracked it right onto the new bedroom carpet! I immediately got out a whole battery of chemicals and tried to clean it up. Needless to say, my efforts didn’t improve the situation; in fact, they only made it worse. In desperation, we did what we should have done in the first place: we got the name of a good carpet cleaner and called him. He spent as much time cleaning up the residue from my failed efforts as he did cleaning up the tar.
Have you ever tried a home repair only to end up in bigger trouble than when you started? Most of us simply don’t have the expertise for computer or appliance repair and few of us are licensed plumbers or electricians; unfortunately, many of us think we are! Furthermore, instead of getting help once we realize we’re in over our heads, we tend to muddle through, taking the situation from bad to worse. When we finally come to our senses and call in the experts, they not only have to fix the initial problem but also all the damage done in our failed attempts at repair.
It’s not just in our homes that we find things that need cleaning, mending, or repair. Often, there’s something in our lives that is faulty, damaged or broken. Even then, we tend to say, “I’ve got this!” when we truly don’t. It’s takes a fair amount of humility to finally admit that something in our life isn’t working and we just can’t fix it on our own. Before making things worse, however, we might want to think about calling on the number one life restorer: God. He truly is the answer to our prayers. While consulting His repair manual (the Bible) and several prayer sessions with him might be all we need, God also might steer us toward some expert earthly assistance.
Remember the old Maytag advertisements with the lonely repairman languishing in his office? Nobody ever called him. Maytag appliances may not need much fixing but our messed up lives surely do. As soon as we realize that we’ve got a problem with the way they’re functioning, let’s not hesitate; make that call to the expert before it gets any worse. God is heaven’s repairman; He is always there to rescue us. Just give Him a call!
When I was young, back in the 1950s, sex education pretty much consisted of some talk about bees pollinating flowers. Married couples on television didn’t sleep in the same bed and husbands always seemed completely surprised when wives announced a baby was arriving. As a little girl, I naively thought marriage (not intercourse) was what produced babies and that God put babies in a woman’s tummy once she was married.
As earth’s first gardener, God knew a thing or two about agriculture. Recognizing that continually working a field depletes the soil of valuable nutrients, He commanded the Israelites to let their land remain fallow every seven years. During this yearlong land Sabbath, no produce was to be planted, pruned or harvested and any food that grew by itself, such as grapes or figs, could not be harvested, sold or stored. God promised to grant an abundant crop in the sixth year so there would be plenty of food to carry the people through the Sabbath year and well into the next years until a new crop was harvested. Considered ownerless, the produce that grew by itself could be eaten by anyone or fed to the animals. The Sabbath year was a test of faith; it required the Israelites to acknowledge God as the true master of the land, to trust Him for His provision, and to share with those less fortunate.
In preparation for my mother-in-law’s 100th birthday, I’ve been creating a timeline. After perusing a century’s worth of history, I juxtaposed high points in her life with what was happening in the world around her. During her life-time, my mother-in-law saw the advent of everything from three-colored traffic lights and the Monopoly game to E-Z-Passes and X-Boxes, from pop-up toasters and World Book encyclopedias to microwave ovens and Google, from rotary dial phones and the first airmail to iPhones and email, from the first transatlantic flight and Admiral Byrd’s South Pole expedition to space shuttles, lunar landings and Mars’ probes.
Devotions of the Heart 