For this issue we will consider the subject of adversity.
HOW CAN YOU TELL IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY.
You see a "60 minutes" news team in your office.
You call Suicide Prevention and they put you on hold.
You turn on the news and they're showing emergency routes out of the city.
Your twin sister forgot your birthday.
Your car horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you follow a group of Hell's Angels on the freeway.
Your boss tells you not to bother to take off your coat.
Your income tax check bounces.
You put both contact lenses in the same eye.
Do advertisers make us bitter or better?
A man confined to bed because of a lingering illness had on his sunlit windowsill a cocoon of a beautiful species of a butterfly. As nature took its course, the butterfly began its struggle to emerge from the cocoon. But it was a long hard battle. As the hours went by, the struggling insect seemed to make almost no progress. Finally, the human observer, thinking that "the powers that be" had erred, took a pair of scissors and snipped the opening larger. The butterfly crawled out, but that's all it ever did--crawl. The pressure of the struggle was intended to push colorful, life-giving juices back into the wings, but the man in his supposed mercy prevented this. The insect was anything but a stunted, abortion, and instead of flying on rainbow wings above the beautiful gardens it was condemned to spend its brief life crawling in the dust. That gives us the idea that God knows what He is doing. It's a fact that you can depend on Him -- even when it seems the struggle is hard and meaningless. The following are some of His instructions, and they work.
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4
Pastor John Giesbrect
