Valley

The interesting thing about being a practicing Christian is that the phrase "Everything Happens for a Reason" takes on a whole new brand of meaning. Because we believe in an actual being who takes a definitive interest in our lives, patterns emerge that seem to have the holy thumbprint on them. Frustratingly, the reason for certain things happening doesn't often become clear until much later, which gives one cause to empathize with the children of Israel when God said "Yea, walk around the wall, then shout and blow your horns. The walls will fall down, I swear". For those that don't know the end of the story, the walls did fall down, and the day was won for the Israelites.

In a world without walls that need tumbling, we have other trials that seem to be just as daunting. Take Saturday, when Paul and I received three, count em', three bills we were not expecting, all of them 3 digits, and one of them edging in on four. We can't afford any of them.

I have no earthly idea why God is choosing right now to allow this to happen, or what he is trying to tell us. Perhaps we have gotten so proud of ourselves overcoming debt that we have forgotten who the praise really goes to, and He is now knocking us back, Gideon-style, to remind us that the battle, financial or otherwise, is his, not ours. In case you are unfamiliar with the story, when Gideon was readying himself to take the Hebrew army against the Mideonites, God told him to send all but 300 men home, so that it would be obvious that their victory was miraculous. Sometimes God send us into these situations with the knowledge that to overcome them would be a miracle.

Whatever the reason, we are being given, in this admittedly horrific situation, an opportunity. It hit me recently that God is not a passive entity. He is active in our lives, constantly molding and teaching and giving opportunity to grow. Maybe out of this will grow a testimony to his faithfulness, a newly remembered trust in his promises, or a humility in the knowledge that the battle is always the Lord's.

My prayer now is that we rejoice in the fire and in the valley, and that, though we are afraid(which we are) and discouraged (which we definitely are), we will remember that God has never failed us.