Swift Transition

May 30

Swift Transition reprint of May 30-2008

Time is filled with swift transition. How quickly things change. Disasters, either natural or man made change lives in a matter of minutes. These things should remind us that this life is temporary. They should point us toward God and toward heaven.

Genesis 47:9 "And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty years:" The Patriarchs indeed were pilgrims. Abraham began by leaving his city of Ur for an undisclosed destination, and the only land that he ever owned was the field of Ephron which contained the cave of Machpelah in which to 'bury his dead'. Isaac and Jacob also were wanderers living in tents.

Time--we are all given twenty-four hours in a day. We make plans, go about our daily routines. Using time because we have it. How a crisis changes our perspective. This is the tornado season, and sometimes out of the blue, tornadoes pounce. They can be capricious as a destructive child. People wonder why. An old acquaintance of mine used to ask, "Why not?"

Yes, that is an interesting thought. Why not? Ecclesiastes 9:11 "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

We don't know exactly why certain things happen, but we can look in faith to the God who sustains us in all things.

"Hello, Mom?"

"HI--What's up, son?"

"I'm sending you some pictures of my leg."

"Your leg? Why do I need to see pictures of your...leg?"

"Well, there was an accident at work the other day. The guy was running a chop saw...the blade broke and the chop sawflew off and hit me in the leg. I had four stitches in it, but I thought it looked like maybe it had some infection in it and wanted to know what you thought."

"Oh, I need to see that, huh...yeah I'll see if I can bring it up. I...well here it is. Can I enlarge this pic? Oh, well, I see what you mean. Yeah, it looks like maybe some infection right there. What do you have for infection?"...

"Yeah, it was kinda funny."

"Funny?" says I thinking he'd turned his corner.

"Yeah, that morning I'd bought a 24 ounce pop, because they didn't have a 20 ounce like I usually buy. So, I had that stuck in the leg pocket on my britches. If I'd only had the 20 ounce it wouldn't have been the right size. They say that probably slowed the blade down enough, or I could have lost my leg."

Yeah, that's real funny honey. Praise the Lord. Our God is an awesome God.