I love seeing what God is doing in the everyday of life. It never ceases to amaze me what we can see Him doing in our struggles and dramas if we have eyes to see.
I’m musing today from the emergency department in Charlie’s all trussed up in a white gown with my shoulder in a sling. Yes, it could have been worse!
A barrister, waste management specialist, town planner, engineer, policeman and two vicars were riding around the river Thursday morning. We had enough human resource to build a small town! It was all getting a bit fast and frenzied when a car just suddenly turned left in front of our bikes. We were in the bike lane with nowhere to go. One vicar slammed into the side of the car. The town planner, forever vigilant, guessed correctly and missed everything and the second vicar hit the road hard and went for a slow motion slide on the bitumen. The rest had time to stop.
If you do things, like live your life, things happen! But here is the disturbing thing: if you try to do nothing that will risk anything, things still happen.
The two vicars are all right—sore and aware that it could have been even worse. But the wonderful thing is reflecting on what God is up to “in” the situations that befall us – like Mildred sharing in church last week that aggressive cancer has taught her that there are people who truly love her and are her family as much as her kin are.
Sharing our struggles and letting others in actually brings us closer. A bike crash unfolds all sorts of acts of kindness, generous relationships, coincidental connections and servant-hearted professionals if we have eyes to see them. I give thanks to God for them and, when I remember, tell them they remind me of Jesus.
The Apostle Paul was smarter than everyone else, better connected than everyone else and in a more privileged position than anyone else but in 2 Corinthians 5 he glories in his absolute weakness. Why? Because, he says, it’s when he is weak and has his eyes open, that he sees the strength of God working in the situation in ways he cannot even begin to imagine.
I pray that, as things happen to you, you will exercise his ears and his eyes and, with Paul, give thanks in Christ Jesus for what the will of God is producing in you and those around you.
With you in your adventure.
Malcolm
