Sunday, October 29, 2006

Reality Check!

It just crossed my mind yesterday…I am 16 years old. I live an impoverished life in Cuba. My family is desperately in need of food. I run into a gentleman at the market who is in need of women to work as maids in a hotel in the States. He says that with the money that I would make I can support my family. I agree to go over. In total ignorance I am sucked in. For soon I find out that I am not to work in a hotel at all but, rather, I am now one of their new slave prostitutes being smuggled illegally into the country. I have no rights. I am not free. I cannot escape. I am beaten and raped and used.

Now I am 12 years old. I live in Africa. My dad makes 30 dollars a month to provide for our family. Our housing consists of a grass hut and our food of rice. I go to the nearby pond to draw water for drinking. Little do I know that a worm will enter my body. It will nest in my stomach and, at the end of one year, emerge through a blister that will form on my abdomen. The experience will be agonizing and the worm will twist its way through my body and grow up to 3 feet long. It will wrap itself around the muscles in my leg constricting them like a Boa does its prey. I will have to get medical help from the nearby facility run by people from another country. It will take many days of pulling the worm out inch by inch before I will be cured.

Now I am a baby girl in China. I was just born a few days ago! There’s only one problem. My mother doesn’t love me. She doesn’t want me because I’m not a boy. So I am sent to live in an orphanage with hundreds of other girls whose parents don’t love them either. I am small and utterly vulnerable. No one holds me. No one sings to me.
No one loves me. They think I won’t remember. They don’t know how wrong they are. This will scar me for life.

Now I am 26 years old. I live in America. I am a stay-at-home mom. I live in a $150,000 house that has air conditioning, heat, electricity, clean running water. I get to shower every day if I feel like it. I have food galore. I am well educated. I have a soft queen sized bed to sleep in and down pillows in which to sink my head every night. I am rich beyond my wildest dreams and I don’t even know it. I have a wonderful husband who loves and respects me. Sometimes my children drive me crazy. Sometimes I tire of cleaning the same rooms over and over day in and day out. Sometimes I have a bad attitude because I feel that my life is hard and unfair. I gripe and complain when I am having a bad day because things just aren’t going my way.

O how I need a reality check! Or maybe a change of perspective! I gripe and complain like I live in a third world country. I whine like an unloved baby! But nothing could be further from the truth!

Sunday, October 22, 2006

The Exile from Eden: God's Gift to Man

How can a good and loving God allow death to reign in this world? This question seems to come up a lot. Why does God let people die? Doesn’t He care? I hear people say they don’t believe in God because if He existed, He wouldn’t allow bad things such as death to occur. God is good, after all. Death is bad. A good God would not allow death which is bad. Therefore, there is no God.

O contraire, ye who hath little understanding of who God is! Consider this: death is actually the best thing that could have happened to man next to Jesus’ saving death on the cross. Here’s why: remember what happened in the Garden of Eden? God gave Adam and Eve permission to eat of any tree in the garden except one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Of this tree God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat. He said, “When you eat of this tree you shall surely die.” Well, we all know the story. Satan deceived Eve, she ate of the tree and Adam followed. Thus, sin entered the world.

SIN entered the world. Let’s think about that for a minute. Murder. Theft. Vandalism. Hatred. Slander. Gossip. Drunkenness. Adultery. Fornication. Debauchery. Selfishness. Etc. And along with sin came PAIN—the big four letter word. No one likes pain. It is the consequence of sin. Thus, we live in a world filled with sin and lots of pain. This is why God exiled Adam from the garden. Not only did the garden house the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but it also housed another tree, the tree of life. We don’t hear about this tree very often, but it is very important. You see, if Adam and Eve would have eaten of this tree, they would have lived forever and that in their fallen state.

“Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”—therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which he was taken. So He drove the man out; and at the east of the garden of Eden He stationed the cherubim, and the flaming sword which turned every direction, to guard the way to the tree of life.” Genesis 3:22-24

Death is actually a great act of mercy from our heavenly Father. That He would care enough to not allow us to continue on forever in a world filled with great horrors and heart wrenching pain, speaks to the goodness of the God that He is. God is good. He loves us very much. Therefore, He allows us to die that we may be free from this wretched life. And assuming we have embraced His goodness and loved His good way, we will live forever in the loving arms of our Father and know peace and fulfilling love like we have never known it. If we reject Him, then He allows us to be separated from Him for all eternity. God is more than fair. If we want nothing to do with Him in this life, then He gives us our heart’s desire in the next—eternity without Him.

Monday, October 16, 2006

The Reign of My Heart

A chilling wind breaks over the rolling hill that is my backyard. Rustling the leaves it sways here and there. It is not known where it has come from and it cannot be said where it will go. The overcast sky, while monotonous and uninteresting, has been pouring rain nonstop all day. The rain pours the same with in my soul. I am not particularly fond of days like this when they mirror the condition of my heart.

I am heart sick. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick…” I wish my heart would stop hoping! How much pain is enough? How much more of the throbbing and the aching must I endure? My mind is fed up! I have had enough!

There is a brokenness inside me, you see. I am all too well acquainted with its symptoms and not at all inclined to say I know its source. Pain and agony is the way and frustration is the game. My mind and my heart just aren’t seeing eye to eye on this one. My mind is ready to be free this instant while my heart wants to keep holding on much like the raccoon who, with his arm caught in the trap, could be free if only he would open his paw and let go of the bait.

But just like the stubborn raccoon who will not let go even though his life depends upon it, so my heart is steadfastly wrapped around an ideal that can never be. No matter what amount of disappointment I experience, no matter how great the affliction, still my heart will not succumb. O how I feel trapped with in myself! The heart’s pull is great and many a time have I been sucked in. I WANT TO BE FREE! This is the cry of my soul! Lord Jesus, have mercy and heal me!

“For we know that the Law is spiritual; but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin. For that which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not wish to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that it is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which indwells me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh, for the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish.” Romans 7:14-19