Expect a Miracle ...

When faced with a tough situation, what is your response? Do you expect God to show up? Do you believe He'll make a difference? Do you expect a miracle?

Most of us assert that we do believe in these things; or at least we want to. Our biggest obstacles seem to be our personal expectations and our distain for God's timing. We expect things to be done "yesterday" and His spiritual timepiece seems slower than molasses or it seems all together broken.

Think of your current and troublesome situation. It might involve your:

• marriage
• child(ren)
• friendships
• job or vocation
• in-laws or extended family
• elderly parent(s)
• finances
• health
• happiness
• future

When it feels as though God has forgotten us as we deal with some of the above concerns, doom and gloom presence themselves close by.

• We worry and fret about whether our marriage can survive.
• We cry over the child that refuses to grow up.
• We whine about the demands at work.
• We operate with polite distance with our extended family.
• We feel the strain of caring for an elderly parent.
• We grieve over the losses in the stock market.
• We fore go our personal health because of our busyness and our commitment to serving others.
• We believe happiness is inextricably linked to the opinions of others.
• We grapple over impending decisions.
• With each stressful situation, we risk getting upset, even enraged, with God.

Wouldn't a better option be to release our expectations and personal sense of urgency over to God? Wouldn't we have greater success and peace by accepting and submitting to His heavenly timetable, which must be infallable (if it is His)? Only He knows when, where, how, and why; and He doesn't always reveal this knowledge to us. But don't think of Him as holding out on you. Rather, think of His lack of revelation as a divine protection. He is never, never, never wrong; nor is He ever late. Therefore, we can still expect a miracle and wait patiently for His divine intervention.

Each of us needs to focus on the character of God in order to trust Him when things look dark and foreboding.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5,6

Murphy

Easy Come; Easy Go

Most of us have heard this adage since we were little kids, "Easy come; easy go." It can be applied to all sorts of situations, but I have a particular situation in mind. In May, 1992, our house in Broadmoor subdivision suffered from a huge conflagration (a house fire). In about eight minutes from being discovered by Jon (who, in turn, found Mike). They got out of the house with their pajamas on. Cal and I were at church that Sunday morning; Jon and Mike were going to the second service. In those eight minutes, about 85% of our roof burned off our ranch-style home.

Mike called the church and a deacon told me about taking the phone call. Mike said, "Dorable, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is Jon and I are ok. The bad news is the house has burned down." I was shocked. After making sure that Cal was taken care of, a friend and I drove to my house. On the way I prayed, "Lord, I don't know what you are doing, but help Mike and I to glorify your name even in this situation."

As friends came to our house after the church service, I repeated to many of them, "Isn't God good?" Of course they looked at me in disbelief. It was sort of an odd thing to say ... if one were merely talking about the obvious loss of all our worldly possessions. But I wasn't talking about that at all. I was expressing praise and gratitude to God for sparing the lives of my sweet husband and my younger son. When I compared the loss of all of our stuff with the idea of having a four year old in the burn unit at the Baton Rouge General Hospital, it seemed that we came out pretty good. No one was hurt or burned in any way. We weren't going to the emergency room or the funeral home. In my economy (and God's), I was stating the obvious truth that God is good (in the good times and the hard times.)

Interestingly, my sister recently lost her house in Hurricane Ike. Karen and her husband live about 30 yards from the water's edge of Calcasieu Lake. The wave action and flood surge compromised the structure of their wooden house. It also dug a 15 x 8 ft (deep) hole in their yard. The surge squashed a stock trailer like one would crush a soda can. Amazing. Today, they have snakes in the house and a backed-up sewerage in their master bedroom. Probably, the wave action and wind and the FEMA trailer from Hurricane Rita bashed their house so much that it broke the pipes under the house. Subsequently, the water from the lake got into their lines and caused everything to back-up. Ugh.

God is so faithful. We walked through our loss fairly well and so far Karen and her family are doing the same. Praise the Lord. What do people do when they don't have a relationship with the Lord. I don't know. I'm glad I'll never have to find out what that is like. I'm already a member of the family. Are you?

Much love, murphy

Hurricane Gustov

Well, it is so good to be on the internet again.

Hurricane Gustov totally disrupted the lives of everyone living in Louisiana and the Deep South.

Most of us have been without electricity for over a week. We have depended on the graciousness of our neighbors when they:

• covered our roofs with blue tarps after the tree crashed through the house
• they brought cooked food (they had to cook everything in their freezer due to no electricity)
• they brought bags of ice; loaned generators, fans, batteries and everything else you can imagine.
  

There was a group page on Facebook so the members could "talk" with one another to find out what was going on.

Governor Bobby Jindal has done an unbelievable job and his leadership skills have been stellar. Thank God for someone who has surrounding himself with intelligent, thoughtful, foresighted personnel.

I hope all of you are well. I hope you have electricity a.s.a.p.! I hope you can take a hot shower or a hot bath and feel really clean. I hope the constant sound of generators will soon disappear and the mounds of trees and debris will soon be taken away from our curbs.

Love you all,
Murphy