Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity. ~I Timothy 4:12~

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

A little poetry, a little story, and faith

God, just thank you for how you have provided for me and how you have blessed me.
     How could I ever be worried?
You hold me in your hand and think I'm more beautiful than a mountain landscape.
     How great you are!

When life is constantly changing and chaos abounding,
     you and you alone remain constant.
You are the same God
     that is always loving, guiding, forgiving and providing.

Your name is great in all the earth!
     No other name or entity can even match a glimpse of you.
Not the Huskers, not the Packers, not the Yankees,
     Not the USA, not the UN.
To you alone is all the power and glory!

You are wise,
     so wise our thoughts can't comprehend.
We are stuck in our simple thinking, our ignorance.
No more than a 1st grader trying to understand advanced trigonometry.
How can we expect to understand your plan?

Looking ahead we want to know what is coming, but the events and purposes are beyond our comprehension in our current state. Only after we have gotten there a step at a time by the path you have set can we look back and understand.

Just like in math, we look back and see how all the past steps added up and how we never were ready to learn about what was on the horizon until we took each seemingly insignificant step to get there.

I remember learning proofs and it used the math rules I learned in 1st grade. Then I wouldn't have been able to comprehend proofs if I were told about them and that they were in my future. But blessed ignorance for 9 years perfectly prepared me for it and I could see how all the steps from 1st grade to geometry were necessary and the future necessarily secret.

Similarly, I've seen you work like this, God. Looking back I see what your plan was and your purposes. I see it in so many places that you couldn't have told me what your plan was prior to it. I wouldn't have been able to handle it. So why do I think now is different?


You are asking me to have faith and I respond by asking you for turn-by-turn directions.

Didn't you tell Abraham to go to the land which you will show him? You didn't even tell him which way to start or a general idea of what it would look like or how far away it was. Yet, he went. Going until you said he arrived! And he was blessed for it!

Please give me faith like Abraham, that I will go each day with full reliance on your plan and not asking for details that I can't handle anyway. Guide my path, provide for me, and give me all good things to do your will and bring glory to your name. Amen.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

God's Statistics

I'm always amazed when I watch football games and they have a statistic for EVERYTHING! "Well this team has won 33% of their games when they are down by 14 or more in the 3rd quarter." I really wonder who keeps track of all these, and more importantly how will they know which ones will be important?

That only leads me to my next point (that I'm sure you've heard):
79% of all statistics are made up.

But how would you prove that wrong? Statistics. And I don't know about you, but I know I haven't taken all those tests to determine statistics. They are just guesses. In fact, the whole thing is rather obscure.

BUT not when we are dealing with God!

I'm sure He thinks we're all simple-minded and really narrow in our thinking because we put so much emphasis on statistics and probability. Partly because he knows how statistics don't really do us much good in the greater scheme of things, AND because he knows that our statistics are wrong.

God is the statistician of our lives. He could give you a list of statistics so long that no computer could hold all of the data. Just for you. Seriously, all the computers in the world together couldn't hold all the data that God has on you alone!

Often times I want to know some of these statistics. How long have I spent sleeping? How many people have drank the same water molecules that I'm drinking? How many people have I seen? How many hours have I spent in a Ford Escort?

None of that really matters though.

What does matter is that God cares for me! That is why he knows all of these things. Want proof?

And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered
~Matthew 10:30~

I don't know if God could have chosen a more impossible statistic for us to imagine! I know that I'm constantly shedding and leaving a trail of hair all over my dorm room. Yet, I always have new hair growing and amazing me that I'm not bald! Not to mention we have so many hairs that every time I think I have them all pulled back there are always some that elude me.

God knows all statistics because He loves us and because He is so great and all-knowing.

***Coming Soon! A series of blog posts that go over business lessons in the Bible.