Storms

In my high school girls Bible study, we talked about storms last night.

Storms as in: your grandpa dying, or your parents divorcing, or your boyfriend pressuring you into more intimacy, or your girlfriends seeming more shallow lately, or your parents demanding too much from you.

Storms aren’t exactly a party. Storms are often the place people lose their faith in God, because they don’t like that He allows the storms to come.

The thing is, God isn’t like your mother—he’s not standing over people, holding that wooden spoon, and as soon as they start doing something wrong, whack! he nails them.

God lets us—ALL of us—make our own decisions, whether good for us or bad for us, whether good for other people or bad for other people. He also holds life and death in his hands, because he can see the larger picture of it all.

So, all that to say, storms will come.

But you’re not alone.

God wouldn’t allow these things to happen, but let you flail on your own. Whether you feel his presence or not, he’s there. The fact you can’t feel God or hear his voice doesn’t suddenly negate the fact that HE IS THERE.

And not just himself, but also the people around you who want to help you. Reach out to family or friends, to your youth pastor or youth group. God put them there, in your life, for a reason.

Ask them to pray for you. Sometimes when a group of people pray, you can physically feel the power of that many hearts asking for the same thing from God.

Help and healing won’t happen overnight, but if you keep asking for prayer, keep talking to people, keep praying yourself—one day you wake up, and the storm has blown over.

So for now, just weather out the storm.

Life would be easy without people's problems!

I rarely get cranky ... I'm a pretty easy going person. But there are a few things that bug me.

Being late. I hate it.
Appointments. Ugh.
Paperwork. Just shoot me.
People who complain. Which makes me laugh reading the above list!

Yesterday included all of the above. It started when I woke up in a funk and kicked off when my puppy chewed up an ant poison stake. (I learned from my vet to make your dog puke just give him a teaspoon of hydrogen peroxide. It works!)

The call to the vet and the puking made us late for my grandma and son's eye appointments, which made everyone complain. And guess what was waiting when I got home? Edits and paperwork.

(Oh, yes, and the dog is fine!)

Being alive would be easy if there weren't dogs and people and problems, but I need to remember life isn't about my world, my comfort. Life is about LIFE.

When babies are born, the world centers around them. They only think of their needs. As we grow, it's the job of our parents to open our eyes to the world around us ... to help us understand "It's Not All About Me."

We get this ... most of the time, but spiritual growth has the same goal. "Love the Lord, love others like yourself." Hmmm ... easy to say, not so easy to do.

How are you doing? Here are some questions to ask. Then ... well, I'll leave the answers up to you.

--Is there someone who is going through a hard time that I haven't helped like I should?

--Do I look down on others who I don't think are "as good as" me?

--Do I ignore old people or people that are different?

--Do I keep others waiting?

--Do I carelessly forget when someone asks me for help?

--Do I keep silent when I should speak out?

--Do I butt in too quickly when I shouldn't?

--Do I let myself be bothered by things that really aren't that important?

--Do I accept when trouble comes my schedule gets messed up?

Just a few things to think about. I know I will be thinking about them ... and trying to figure out how to work on that "loving others" part of life.

--Tricia Goyer