OnFire #148 Catching Rubber Boots and Golfballs
OnFire Encouragement
Letter
Hi Folks:
We’ve been enjoying some great weather in the last few days. I love being able to get out to enjoy the sun and do a little yard work. The warm sun on my back feels good and makes up for the leaf raking. In about a month we’ll be on our wilderness canoe trip. Weather like this makes me itchy to be on the water again.
Mark is quite the little celebrity around town. Normally this happens to someone else’s kid, not ours. Its neat.
I hope your week is going well.
Blessings,
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I went fishing for the first time this season and caught some unexpected things. No, not a rusty tin can, or a black rubber boot. And no, no fish, although catching a fish would be unexpected. (Jan bought me a t-shirt with a picture of a man fishing, and the words, “Here fishy, fishy, fishy.” Sometimes I think that might work better.)
This time I found eight floating golf balls and a plastic snow shovel. The golf balls escaped from the aquatic driving range on the lake, because they are marked with red stripes and the word, “Range.” The snow shovel is a little harder to explain.
Some unexpected things are pleasant. Some are not. I once fell off the bank of a brook while fishing in spring. And then there are times like finding a flat tire on my car or a dead battery.
Those things don’t even begin to compare with Joseph’s experience, however. His father, Jacob, sent him out to check on the other brothers, who were tending flocks nearby. The brothers spotted him in the distance and plotted to kill him. A few weeks ago we talked about the complicated dynamics in Joseph’s family (OnFire #146). Apparently this did not get better with time. Only the intervention of his half-brother Reuben prevented them from killing him.
So Joseph found himself stripped and in a cistern, a hole in the ground which normally held water but was empty. The brothers saw an opportunity and sold him to travelling slave merchants. It certainly wasn’t what he expected when he started out that day.
It is often the unexpected which reveals our character. Like bugs in the back of the cupboard, there are things we only see when we surprise them. The traits we might tuck away and keep hidden when life is running smoothly come tumbling out when we hit one of life’s potholes.
How we react to these surprises shows us the areas where we need to ask God for extra strength. I once reacted to something Ian said to me and I snapped a stop sign we had made over my knee. How ironic is that? The sign said stop, and I didn’t. I felt so stupid and Ian and I had to work through that. I’ve made big improvements over the years, but every once in a while something catches me.
So when life’s unexpected moments pop up and we react in ways we know aren’t good, we can take advantage of the opportunities to see inside our own character. Having seen the area we need to improve, we can then ask God for the strength we need.
I hope this helps. Be OnFire.
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