Mine Field

My longtime friend and brother in the Lord has just gone through a tragic end to his marriage.  Since it is a divorce situation, it is even harder than the death of a spouse.  He has been struggling with it for about a year, but is starting to come to terms with the changes caused by his former unfaithful spouse.

Although some things are settling down, there are new things are now haunting him.  He finds himself in a minefield full of aggressive single women.  Things aren't the way he remembered them when he was young and single.  He is considered sheltered and rigid by other "christian" divorced women because his standards remain what they were in the 1980's.  Some of the comments made to him by these women around his age, (who are evidently observing that he no longer wears a wedding ring), are like something from a horror story of seduction.

I know it's a dark world out there and this is very instructive.  He made a comment that illustrates his dire situation, and ours too:
He said, "You know, before, I never had to live every day in such dependence on Him.  Now I do..."
This was followed by a statement meant to communicate how uncomfortable he is with that situation.  When it comes down to it, we are all too uncomfortable with living every day in dependence on Him.  It comes down to complete trust first.

My friend will be an "A" student soon, I suspect.  The Lord will preserve him as He clearly builds up my brother to be something he could not have been before.  May the Lord help us to see what a dire situation we are in every day and learn what it means practically to trust and depend on Him.  It needs to be like breathing instead of an occasional reaction doesn't it?

Someday

Someday we will know:

• How the allowed ugliness was masterfully woven into His awesome grand design
• What He was doing for us when we were bitterly disappointed
• What He wonderfully accomplished in us when we were driven to realize our nothingness
• How a dear believer was actually rescued by Him when all we saw was a sudden tragic death
• The pure gold that He was making while His dear ones were being tried by extreme difficulty
• How deeply His heart was broken while on the cross
• What He wrote on the ground when He was questioned about the woman caught in adultery
• Our own special name that He only knows, and has written on the white stone that He will give us

This list could, and will, go on forever.  It's really not hard to understand that being with Him for eternity will be better than the best exploring we can imagine.  There will be a continuous stream of new reasons to praise Him forevermore.