Oh, God, my Lord, step in; work a miracle for me—you can do it! Get me out of here—your love is so great!—I’m at the end of my rope, my life in ruins. [Psalm 109:21-22 (MSG)]
In her book Almost Everything, Anne Lamott describes a young mother who, after surviving a grueling battle with cancer, saw its return a few years later. As her friends tried to reassure her with cancer survival stories, the woman cheerfully announced, “Oh, God’s got it!” Whether figuratively or literally, Lamott says she now wears those words on a necklace. I know that if I ever got a tattoo, I might choose the same words: “God’s got it!”
A story is told of a mountain climber who decided to make a solo ascent of the Aconcagua in Argentina. As the day wore on, a storm threatened. Although the thunder rumbled and the sky grew dark, the man was determined to continue rather than seek shelter. Suddenly a dense fog rolled in and it began to hail. Losing all visibility, the climber slipped on a ridge and fell. As he dropped through the air, he was sure that he’d die until the rope he’d secured caught and stopped him with a jolt. As the frightened man swung in the darkness, suspended he knew not where, he called out, “God, help me!”
A booming voice answered: ”What do you want me to do?” Swaying in the frigid night air, the man said, “Save me, please.” When God asked if the climber really believed He could save him, the man said, “Of course, I do. You’re God!” The man, however, changed his mind about trusting God when the voice in the darkness said, “Then cut the rope that is holding you up!” Refusing to let go, he just clung to his rope and swung over what seemed to be a bottomless abyss. After the weather cleared the following day, a group of climbers found the frozen man hanging from a rope, suspended just a few feet from a ledge and a recess that would have offered him safe shelter during the storm. That climber didn’t believe that, “God’s got it.”
When we’re at the end of our rope, it’s not enough to believe there is a God. We must believe in Him—in His word, promises, love, faithfulness, goodness, and power. Trusting Him with our lives, we must be willing to step out in faith, even if it means cutting a rope. If we want peace, we must believe that God’s got it!
Our pod is missing! Well, not exactly missing but no one can tell us where it is! We only know that the large box holding our precious possessions is no longer sitting in our driveway back in Illinois nor is it sitting in our driveway here in Florida. While the company promises us that it will arrive by September 29, their responses to our inquiries don’t inspire much confidence. How can they know when it will arrive if they don’t know where it is? Moreover, no one can tell us why it will take four weeks to travel 1,378 miles! Although I keep reminding myself that it’s just stuff, it is our stuff—the stuff we cared about enough to keep and move.
When we moved to our small Midwestern town over fifty years ago, we paid our utility bills at the local drugstore and I longed for the “good old days” when we sold our northern home recently. Trying to update our information and go completely paperless, I attempted to access our various accounts on line, meaning I had to remember (or create) a wide variety of user names and passwords. If I managed to sign in, I’d get to the security questions and discover that my favorite color or dessert is not what I thought it was! Once past that hurdle, I had to prove I wasn’t a robot by deciphering those squiggly letters and numbers (a near impossibility)!
“I love you,” said my grandson to his mother; “I love you more,” was her quick reply. They went back and forth, each claiming to love the other most, until one said, “I love you to the moon and back!” Of course, they’re echoing the sentiments found in Sam McBratney’s delightful book Guess How Much I Love You. In it, every time Little Nutbrown Hare tells his father how much he loves him, Big Nutbrown Hare responds with an even larger amount of love. As he’s being tucked into his bed of leaves, the sleepy youngster thinks he’s finally out-distanced his dad when he says he loves him all the way to the moon. His father kisses him goodnight and, with a smile, whispers, “I love you right up to the moon—and back!” Since the moon’s distance varies with its orbit, the distance to the moon and back varies from around 443,362 to 505,244 miles. Even that measurement, however, isn’t correct; we can no more quantify a father’s love for his son than we can our Heavenly Father’s love for His children.
We tend to think of our pastors as the ones who do the ministering and we, the congregation, as the ones to whom he or she ministers. Indeed, our pastors do care for, comfort, aid and support us but their main job is to equip us: to train, outfit and prepare us to go out and be Christ’s ministers to the world! Rather than them being the players in the game with us being the fans who show up on game day, our pastors are more like the coaches and athletic trainers who prepare their team to go out on the field and play with skill and enthusiasm! Too often, however, we act like onlookers rather than members of the team.
“Get Fuzzy,” a comic strip drawn by Darby Conley, chronicles the life of Rob and his somewhat eccentric pets: Bucky Katt, a temperamental feline with “cat-attitude,” and the gentle Satchel Pooch who frequently is the butt of Bucky’s jokes and the target of his bullying. In one comic, Satchel pondered the concept of free will. “Having free will means you also have the freedom to not,” says the dog, who then resolves, “I choose to exercise free won’t and not get mad.”
Devotions of the Heart 