February 17, 2009

Help

The opening season of the CBS reality show the Amazing Race had contestants going up and down a steep slippery Swiss hillside carrying huge blocks of cheese. The team’s conversation went something like this, “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done…You can do it just keep moving. No, I can’t do it any more, it’s too hard. You’ll have to carry mine I’m just not strong enough…Don’t quit, we can do this.” It sort of sounds like the conversation we Christians have with the Lord. If I’m honest I have to confess that I don’t always want the Lord to help me carry my load…I rather have Him carry the whole thing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Gail;
-----One of my favorite teases is, “A Christian’s excitement for the return of the Lord is directly proportional to his debt load.” By the time I had amassed a strong debt load, I was learned enough about life to know He does not pay it for me. None of my brothers and sisters in the Lord want to pay mine either. And my Dad is too wise to pay it. He knows that assistance in love is not to lift the burden for you, but to show you how to lift it yourself.
-----I sent myself into a serious manic-depressive cycle waiting for the Lord to bring me the opportunities life needs, rather than learning to find them. Overcoming that cycle taught me that the opportunities a person does not make himself are found by the attitudes he must develop himself. I have met a lot of people who argue this point, but it comes from all the observations I have seen on my side of the good-fortune fence. Good fortune has never come to me naturally, with one exception, and life has never been easy.
-----I don’t deny the existence of the other side of the fence. It has inspired our saying, “…born with a silver spoon in his mouth.” There are people who seem to steer into good fortune no matter what happens. One of my clients is that way. He has a lot of property and a lot of money. He also has the drive to be self-sufficient. So, when the breaker-box in his house was giving him trouble, he tried to fix it himself. He touched a screwdriver to the wrong side of the main switch and received a worrisome face-full of sparks in a blast of super-heated air. Being an ex-Marine, he bandaged his own eyes, but of course, he was taken to the doctor. A few days later during his follow-up visit, he told the doctor his eyes began to feel so good he removed his bandages, and gee, he could see better than he had in twenty years! The doctor congratulated him on having received a free CK procedure.
-----Lots of folks don’t like the term “luck”. But I have always noticed that there are honest, hard working, substantive folks living on both sides of the good-fortune fence. Most live closer to it and get a little mix of good and bad fortune. Others live far from it and receive either sharply good fortune, or bluntly bad. The fact is, fortune sprinkles down upon the earth, and simply by the law of averages, some get a little more of one kind than of the other. Ask the child born with cerebral-palsy, but expect to hear from her mostly about good attitude. She knows the Lord doesn’t actually carry your cheese. She knows no one else can carry her cheese. She must adjust to the load. And it is that necessity the Lord wants His children develop.

Love you all,
Steve Corey