Browsing Tag

Trials

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

You’ll get through.

Posted on March 22, 2022

Sometimes, things you never saw coming derail your life plans.  This derailment is exacerbated when you are living in that generation that’s the middle of the sandwich—in that generation that’s pulled between the aged parents and the kids. When that happens, you feel you aren’t running your life anymore, but it is running you. it’s kind of a numb experience and you just keep telling yourself that the life that’s running you is short and that the One in charge of your destiny is, in fact, still in charge; that there’s coming an eternal day when everything gets put right again—only this time without the potential of derailment, defilement or decay. There are a few lessons you can learn quickly in these times of life. This is merely reflection; not an exhaustive list of everything I need to know to deal with such a time. I don’t yet know that list. Here’s a baker’s dozen: 

  1. Never put your trust in people. Always keep your emotional funding in the treasure chest in heaven (Luke 12:33,34). 
  2. Don’t feel guilty if there’s ever an hour when you can walk around in an antique store or do whatever it is that distracts you for a minute; whatever brings peace. It’s worth it for the renewal—for what it enables you to do for others (Col. 3:15).
  3. Keep trying to do the things that have encouraged you all of your life. If they encouraged you before, they have some power now, even though it doesn’t feel like it (Psalm 23:4). 
  4. Never stop looking for those people who are in more dire circumstances than you are. They are everywhere, far and near. (And take them a casserole if they are nearby.) [Deut. 15:11].
  5. Don’t forget that anything is possible with the God who is your Father. His infinite power to change things and His infinite love for you are the chemistry of hope (Mark 14:36). 
  6. Set a repeating prayer alarm and be getting to the throne all day every day. Prayers do not have to be long to be effective. Beg his people to pray, too. Never be embarrassed to ask for prayers from the faithful (Luke 11:8-10). 
  7. Find a few good sisters. Just a few encouragers to whom you can bare your soul are invaluable. Pick women who genuinely care about the important things in life—God, heaven and the people you love so much (1 Thess. 5:11). 
  8. Don’t stop self-examining. Always be humble and know that personal sin is always going to be part of this life’s troubles. But, if you’re faithful, don’t let anyone convince you that God’s not hearing and answering, just because you make mistakes along the way (1 Cor. 10:12). 
  9. Stay in the Word. This should be #1, actually (Heb. 4:12). 
  10. Stay with God’s people. This should be #2 (Rom. 14:19).
  11. As you’re staying with God’s people, don’t be shocked when people of the world act like people of the world. Don’t let those who have never been His or those who have walked away make you bitter. Realize the power of the devil. But be sure to remember the devil’s place on the power spectrum. Your Father’s power is infinite. The devil’s power has limits (1 John 4:4). 
  12. Try not to dwell on the things over which you have no control, no matter their painful nature. God can still control anything and in any way He chooses. Control your relationship with Him above all. He has given you that control. It’s called free moral agency and it is so valuable to you in the day of trouble (1 Peter 5:7). 
  13. Don’t ever fail to praise Him. Your temptation may be to forget the blessings—the sustenance, the support system, your salvation—in the times of despair. Ask Him to help you never to forget the numberless blessings that have never stopped coming your way (Col. 3:2). 

This may not be helpful to a single person except me. But thinking through this list makes me more okay with what I have to do today. When I pillow my head tonight, I will be one day nearer to the throne; one day nearer the ultimate eternal embrace of the Savior.  That “end game” makes all the difference. How do people do hard things without the throne clearly in the faith’s-eye-view? 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

One Thing in Common…

Posted on October 25, 2021

Matthew 7. You could move your arms up and down, pat the air and clap your hands to the song about these two men before you could string together a sentence. Two very different builders–one wise, the other foolish. Two different allegorical verbs with the same direct object: “does them” and “does them not.”  Two distinct houses on very different foundations–one of sand and one of stone.  Two opposite results. One verse ended with hands resolutely clasped together–a firm standing; the other with a giant clap as you illustrated the crash of the foolish man’s house. So much is so different about these men and their life stories.

But one thing is the same. One difficult thing is the same in every story, in every life. It’s the same in the lives of the wise and foolish. It’s the same in my life and yours: “The rains fell and the floods came and the wind blew and beat upon that house…”  That’s the consistent factor in two very different series of events.

Last weekend I asked everyone over forty in the audience to which I was speaking to stand up. Then I asked everyone who’d ever faced a day when she had no idea how she was going to handle the crisis in her world…anyone who’d ever had an “I-cannot-believe-this-is-happening-to-me” day, to sit down.  All standing women sat down, except one. The winds and rain had come in every life of appreciable age in the room, except one. Do you know what that one standing woman took from that illustration? She understood that she’d better get prepared, because the storms come to every life. EVERY life.

Sometimes they are a direct result of personal sin. David had his Bathsheba chapter. Moses was prohibited from Canaan. Judas purchased a rope and found a tree. Peter went out and wept bitterly.

Sometimes they result from events that are no fault of my own. Jacob examined a bloody coat and mourned. Daniel was in the midst of lions and the three Hebrew children were joined in the fire by the minister of God, Himself.

But they are coming to your life. The difference in devastation by them and growth through them is foundational…literally. The sand is disobedience to the “sayings” of the Lord. The rock is doing the “sayings” of Jesus. Both men in Matthew 7 heard the sayings. But the response to the sayings was the difference between refuge and rubble.

I pick refuge. I want my house to be standing when the facades of the world have crumbled. I want Jesus. I want His sayings and I want his blessings. I find his sayings as I read his life and teachings from the precious pages of my favorite book. I have copies of that book everywhere in my house and car. I open them often and I mark them up. That’s how I hear the sayings. But hearing is not enough. The foolish man heard the sayings. I have to do them. There’s the rub. People offer me acceptance to ignore the sayings. People mock me and sometimes call me hypocritical–judging motives–when I really am trying to do the sayings. I get discouraged and wonder “Am I really doing the sayings? ” when prayer seems strained and waiting on the Lord seems a long process. And, in these times when I am hearing the rain and the wind blowing into my world, I have to just find resolve. I go back and examine the culturally challenging commands of the Lord from this sermon…the things he said right before he gave the wise man/foolish man challenge…and I work to DO them. It’s powerful that Jesus said,  just before he told us that the wise man built his house upon the rock “Not everyone that says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of my Father in heaven.” The prep work for storms–my foundation and flood gate–is just that. It’s work. It is doing. “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22).

God is my refuge and strength. He is a very present help in my time of trouble (Psalm 46:1)!  But He rescues and rewards on a select foundation.

 

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

“There’ll be days like this…”

Posted on October 7, 2021

“There’ll be days like this,” my mama said. There have been a few times in my life when things that are pretty routine have become infrequent. Things like putting on make-up or cleaning the trash out of my car or making a path through my living room or actually calculating whether there are too many carbs in this meal I’ve prepared. Some of the days of care-taking for my parents were like that. Some of the days when I was finishing a degree and some of the days when my children were very young. These kinds of days and weeks don’t always text ahead and ask if I’m ready for their visitation. Often it’s just a series of unexpected events that together make life suddenly and abruptly frantic and chaotic. 

Such are the days of this autumn. It’s my favorite time of the year, in any normal year. But this year, there are family members with Covid, large projects for which I am responsible, and lots of extra people in my house due to circumstances that I did not plan or execute. I still love the colors outside, the chill in the air, the football games I’m not watching, the fall trip to see the leaves that we’re not taking this year,  the pumpkin spice, and the autumn decorations in the bins downstairs that I’ve not had time to open. In fact, I praise Him everyday for the beauty and provision all around me. But I just prioritize and pray He will help me get the things done that really matter—eternal things—and not worry about the rest. 

Last night Glenn prayed that God would not interpret the despair that sometimes overtakes us, in seasons of distress or busy-ness, as ingratitude, because “…you have blessed us immeasurably and we don’t want to ever appear as if we don’t know that.” I’ve been thinking about how we make sure that we are not viewed, by God or man, as ungrateful. I think there are two or three obvious ways. 

  1. We keep sharing the good news. We cannot ever get so busy or burdened that we are not evangelistic. We have to keep passing out those cards inviting people to study. We have to keep taking time to meet up with the new converts and trying to nurture infant faiths. We have to take children with whom we have influence, in our laps and look straight into their eyes and talk about how great God is every day. We can’t forget, even when we are needing to hurry and get home, to find the visitors at our services and welcome them and make ourselves available to answer their questions. I think, in these ways, we show our Father that we understand that our greatest blessing has remained untouched by any adversity this life may throw our way. 
  1. We verbalize to God. Sometimes it helps me, in the busiest times of life, to pray on my knees, or to pray out loud while driving. In the times when there’s little sleep and lots of bustle, prayer sitting in a recliner or lying in bed, can quickly digress into unintelligible sentences. Speaking our gratitude to Him every day with clarity, is one way we magnify Him (Psalm 69: 30).
  1. We look around for encouragement. Now, I know that, when you’re feeding a crowd for every meal around your own table, you may not be taking as many meals to the grieving or the sick of your congregation. When you are struggling financially, your service has to be on the skinny. When you’re sick, spreading love may also be spreading germs. But Ola Mae is a nonagenarian with Covid and she continues to make and send cards of encouragement to many people in many places. Carol is in the fourth stage of cancer and she is the number one encourager, to the Colleys and many others, through the written word. Mark is suffering from Crohn’s disease and his heartfelt teaching and admonishing through song in every worship service brings tears to my eyes when I sit near him. Glenn was pretty sick earlier this fall, but I have watched him just keep on faithfully administering that role of being the meat in the sandwich generation while getting back on his feet and back in his pulpit. Lin has had some serious health complications this fall…some major medical tests being done—but she keeps right on heading up more than one ministry in her congregation and homeschooling her children and she even spoke at a recent ladies event. Teresa has seriously struggled with multiple health issues, but spoke from home via zoom at a great ladies day last weekend. Betty and Bill both had Covid this fall, but they are right back in their pew now and serving as the leaders of our group of active seniors. Paul is dealing daily with parents who are not long for this earth and he, too, is balancing parents and kids in stressful times, but he calls every day to encourage my husband. I’m just saying, look around. You will find many examples of extreme gratitude and you will find many reasons to get on your knees and thank the good Lord. 
Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Curbside-Pick-up Lessons

Posted on April 21, 2020

I’m not adept yet at grocery pick-up, but I’m on the curve. Today I did the Kroger pick-up and then ran through a drive-through to get a sandwich. Needing badly to be outside, to see people and to feel that there’s a whole world out there–a world that’s not wholly sick, but still thriving in key ways, I parked under a tree to eat that sandwich. When I finished, I walked around to the back of the SUV and opened the hatch to get a banana for dessert–a banana for which I’d really been wishing for about three days. (In fact, I’d wished for bananas so badly that the girl who was putting my groceries in my trunk said “Wow! Your family must really love bananas!” She was right. I had lots.

As I grabbed that banana (which was mostly green, but I really wanted a banana) I knocked a half gallon of milk out of the back of the forerunner. I really wanted milk, too, but there it ran, down the little incline and over about three more parking spaces. But since I really wanted that milk and I knew how difficult it would be to replace without actually entering a store,  I put what was left of that slit carton in three plastic Kroger bags and put it in the passenger seat beside me. I got the diaper wipes out of the console and cleaned up the mat in the back as best I could (because, do you even know how rank spoiled milk smells?) and came home as, at last, I ate that green banana.

In my driveway, I realized that those three bags had not really fully contained that milk from the bursted jug. The passenger seat was a pretty big mess. And now my driveway was and my sidewalk, too. So I went inside and got the top to a Tupperware cake-taker and went outside and poured the remaining milk from that jug into the Tupperware. I took my big trash can from the kitchen outside to put those heavy wet Kroger bags into the trash. Then I went inside with my bowl of milk, got a jar and a funnel and poured the milk from the Tupperware into my jar. I got just a little over a quart, for all my trouble. It would have been easier to go down to my neighbor’s farm and ask if I could just milk a cow, for that quart. But, like I said, I really wanted some milk.

That’s pretty much how my week’s been going–about a quart of satisfaction per every gallon-worth of trouble…and a big mess in three different places at the same time.  I know some of you can relate.We’re innovative and independent, but we’re also incorrigible in our routineness. We’re inertia-driven, struggling to stop those routines and find our grooves in what seems a surreal stay-in-place pandemonium. We fight anxiety–about the sickness itself, about political extremism, about people from whom we are disconnected, and about the economy. We worry about how we will ever make up all those cancelled appointments and engagements and events once we do start having schedules again. I’ve wondered many times lately how people do quarantines without prayer and the Word. Knowing there’s no place to go now would be extremely hard if there was no ultimate place to go…for eternity.

But there was also this other moment; a moment that also happened while I was driving to that curbside this week….

My friend, a relatively new convert, called to ask me if I was okay and to encourage me to pray. She said, “We all have to pray. God will give us what we need if we just pray and pray.”

I knew she was right (Matthew 6:33), but I wasn’t sure exactly where she was coming from as we started talking. She related to me that some of her unbelieving friends were in a bad situation in a local hospital. She said to them “You need to let me pray for you. God can help you.” And so she did. Her prayers were answered in God’s great timing and this family is now open to Bible study.

She went on to tell me how very hard she has also been praying for her unbelieving husband. “I believe he is coming around to the point of believing in God,” she said. We talked further and agreed on a book that I’m ordering for her study with him. Then we talked about my friend’s job changes lately.

My friend has, for many months, been working in a restaurant. I encouraged her to tell the management that she could not work on Sundays during worship. She did tell them that, but, in spite of their agreement, they kept scheduling her so that she had to miss worship. At last, a few months back, she told them she would have to leave their employment if she could not faithfully worship. So they let her go; essentially, they fired her. She was seeking first the kingdom and, as she did, the Lord, in Matthew 6:33 fashion, provided another job, working with elderly people in a nursing home. My friend loves this work. Its pay and benefits are what she was looking for all along.

Her next statement was rich. ” Here I am, as an essential worker now; working, getting paid to do something I love, and eating right through this pandemic, while the people who fired me, as restaurant managers , are out of work.”  Can you think of a more practical illustration of Matthew 6:33?  I’d be hard-pressed to come up with one.

See, in a few of the little things, we may look at a quart’s worth for all of our trouble and get discouraged. But, in the big eternal things, let’s be sure to notice that, for our quart’s worth of seeking, our needs are repaid in gallons. Your prayer may not always be answered in exactly the same way or with the same immediacy that my friend’s is being answered. But mark it down: When we seek the kingdom first, the result, even when we wait till heaven to get it, will be fourfold (and more) blessings.

I know another family who was in the midst of trying to buy a home in a new city to which they were moving just last month. Their house sold, in the thriving February American economy, before they even placed it on the market. Finding one in their destination city was proving harder, though. It was a seller’s market there, as well. Many homes were simply snatched up before this good family had a chance to travel to see them. In one case, this family even placed an offer on a home sight-unseen, becoming pretty desperate to find a place to live. Every house they tried to buy, though, was not negotiable to their price range or was sold before they could even take a look. This little family kept praying and serving the Lord and, then, the pandemic hit. That’s when the market flipped. Suddenly, people were no longer buying houses and, just like that, this little family’s dollars would go much further in buying a house. They were able to quickly find a house and negotiate the price in a way that would have been impossible only a few days prior. No one in this scenario was happy, of course, that a pandemic had reached America (or even existed, of course.) But, at the same time, this couple could look back and recognize that, in their former disappointments, God was providing something better, as they continued in His will.

It’s often just like that. Providence can be seen so much clearer in hindsight. And, even in situations that were destructive and for which we would have never wished or prayed, for His people looking back, there was Providence…good things coming from difficult things. Blessings in trials.

Am I saying that God’s always going to fix all the problems for us, as His faithful children? Yes. I’m saying He will. I’m just not saying when. For some of the trials, heaven may be the fix. We may struggle with some hardships for all of this lifetime, as His grace is sufficient for us (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). But Paul’s thorn in the flesh, whatever it was, is “fixed” now. Let’s live in the shadow of Matthew 6:33 and patiently wait for the fourfold blessings, whether they may come in the blessed here and now or in the sweet by and by.

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

 

 

 

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Sister to Sister: Who Hit Whom?

Posted on July 24, 2017

Maybe I shouldn’t have taken that random man on the side of the road to the hospital to see his son who, he languished, “was lying there on his death bed.” Yes, that same man who had just crashed into the back of my husband’s car—the car I was driving—from behind—while I was sitting dead still at a red light. 

That paragraph is pretty mixed up. Mixed up and disoriented is something of how I felt, too,  yesterday, after that red car just plowed into the car I was driving.  I was just sitting there at a red light in Attalla, Alabama, when the screeching of tires directed my glance over to the side rearview mirror just as my body lunged forward and then quickly back again…with force! I got out of that car and realized I had a huge metal hair clip in the back of my head that had been abruptly sandwiched behind my cranium. It was a headache of mammoth proportions. 

I couldn’t see the man in the other car. His airbag was inflated and covering his face. But I soon heard him yell “Someone please take me to the hospital. My son is dying. I have to get to the hospital, now. He’s lying on his deathbed.” He nervously pulled out his cigarettes and paced back and forth up and down the sidewalk, making one call after the other and intermittently begging for a ride to the hospital. But the police had arrived and they informed him that, as the driver of the vehicle, he could, under no circumstances, leave the scene. “Please let me go. My son is dying. Won’t someone please give me a ride?” 

In the meantime, someone WAS trying to give me a ride. It was an ambulance the size of a large fire truck. I’m not sure it wasn’t a fire truck! It was definitely paramedic overkill and I thanked them and signed all the papers refusing the ride to the hospital. All insurance info was put on the reports the officers collected. The wrecker came for the red car.  My sturdier car, though it was a pitiful mess, was still drivable. The incident was over. 

But the man who hit me was still begging for a ride. No one was coming to his aid. All the witnesses had left.  I looked at the police officer and said “You think I should give him a ride?” 

“Well,” she said, “I cannot really tell you what to do about that. Of course you’re free to do that if you want, but you do not have to.” 

“Well, but…” I began. “…you are an officer and you know this area. Do you think this is too risky to do? …I mean…well, If my son was in the hospital dying, I’d want to be there.”

“Well, I would not do it,” the officer replied. “I don’t know this man and your only contact with him is that he hit your car. But again, if your heart is telling you to…”

My heart was telling me to, I guess. But mostly “…whatsoever ye would that men should do to you…” was telling me to. So I said to the man…the big man… “Let me give you a ride to the hospital.”

It wasn’t long before I began to think a little more clearly and realized I might have made a mistake. As we got in the car, he began to speak with family members on speakerphone—loud speakerphone— about the wreck. Family members were using crude language and shouting about his wrecking the car belonging to “Justin, who was dying.” The conversations were unpleasant and I wanted to ask him to hang up, so I could call my husband and tell him about my morning and about my back muscles that were getting tauter and about my neck that was hurting when I turned it.

But then he said it…the sentence I thought I must surely be mishearing. But it was plain as day. He said it to his wife: “This woman who hit me is taking me to the hospital.” 

Seriously??!! I was the woman who “hit HIM”? I know I must have looked at him as if he had three heads, but …SERIOUSLY? 

Since I’d heard this man tell some pretty funny versions, at the site, about how the accident happened, I’d taken precautions to be sure the police knew I was stopped at the light, seatbelt on, and car sitting dead still, when the collision occurred. The police said they had witnesses and they were clear on that. “Whatever he is saying will not fly. We can see what happened here.” 

But still…seriously? He is going to sit right here in my car as I carry him to the hospital and tell his wife that I hit HIM?

To say the least,  it was a long ten miles to the hospital. I was informed about how that his son was in the hospital because he’d been poisoned…daily, for two years. When I asked how that happened, I learned that it was one teaspoon at the time. See, the government of Alabama had refused to allow its children to use the natural medicine, marijuana. They (the government) had supplied the children with bug spray mixed with oregano, instead. The Haitians were bringing it in as part of an ISIS mission and the local government was inviting them (the Haitians) in to work at the Goodyear plant, so they could annihilate the teen population. Emma Sansom and George Washington Carver were the good guys and they were under the ground because the respectable people get no honor in Alabama.  All of this man’s ancestors were decorated military intelligence officers and so was he…only he was now retired. He made me understand that I needed to do some research about the Jade Helm maneuvers and I’d be able to share the information with some other people. In fact, that’s why God had let him hit me today…so that I could learn this important information from him and share it and more people could escape from Alabama, understanding that even the police were welcoming ISIS. Four people on Sand Mountain had already died in the last two months from the poison and his son was probably next. It’s simply an ISIS induced community addiction. But his son would be okay, in the end, because his name had already been written in the family Bible. “I already wrote his name in the book and that’s all that matters.”

Of course, along about this time, I was agreeing with just about everything he said and praying I could put him safely out at the hospital. I’ve rarely been so excited to get to the door of an emergency room. Somehow I felt like this could be more of an emergency, by the time I got there, than my kidney stones had been last time I went the ER! (…And why couldn’t  just a regular, normal person plow into the back of my car?) Sometimes I’d like to be part of events that you could make up, if you were creative. But not this stuff.

I finally did get to call my husband who was in another state preaching yesterday. I got his voicemail and just asked him to call when he had a moment. A moment. That must have been exactly what he had when my phone rang. I could hear congregational singing in the background.

“Hello dear, you ok? I just have a second before I have to get back up to preach.” (Not even a moment…just a second is all I get?)

“Yes. I’m fine. But it’s your car. I got rear-ended.”

“Oh no! But you’re ok? You’re sure?”

“Yes. I’m sore, but ok.”

“And the other driver?”

“He’s okay, too.” 

“I’m so sorry. I love you. Gotta go. Bye!”

Apparently that was the “song-before-the-lesson” that I was hearing. 

Sometimes reality is hard to believe. I do not know if this man’s son was actually inside that ER or not. I do not know, if he was there, whether or not the substance being abused was really bug spray and oregano. I have a pretty good idea that ISIS, although having a presence in our country today, does not have one through Haitians at Goodyear in Attalla, Alabama who are part of Jade Helm maneuvers. I’m pretty sure the part about being a retired military criminal investigator wasn’t spot-on either. And I’m positive the part about the security-of-salvation- because-the-name-is-in-the-Bible isn’t. 

But it got me thinking about the way we view the ones who are our helpers. There I was providing the much-needed transportation for that man who had given me the biggest hit I’d ever taken. I was taking him where he needed to go. I was being quiet so that he could talk to his family. I was praying for him. I was trying to make a way for him to go on with his day rather than standing there alone on that busy street corner. My back was bruised and hurting because of the hit while I was listening to him argue with his family.  And then he said, “This woman, who hit me….” That, at least for a few secconds, made my blood boil. It did not feel good. At all.

Later on in the day, I was talking to someone with whom I’ve been trying to work through some problems that she’s been facing; problems she’s encountered largely because she walked away from God. She was disappointed in how one of her requests was answered. She said this: “OK. God has let me down…again.” She, at least momentarily, forgot. She forgot God was the One Who had picked her up. She forgot He was the One who had been quiet on the cross, so she could walk and talk and live in Him. She forgot that He was the One who was transporting her to heaven for eternity. She forgot he was bruised for her iniquities. She just forgot that she had been found in a place with no hope and that He had given her a chance to go on with her life, rejoicing here and through eternity. She forgot that while she was yet a sinner, Christ died for her (Heb. 5:8). 

Now, in no real or substantial way would I ever compare that little incident in Attalla with the mercy of God and our plight without Him. When she said that, I simply answered. “God did not do this. People are the ones who mess up.” I did, though, think about how I felt when that man said that I had hit him and I wondered how God must feel when we blame Him when things go wrong. We say “He hit me.” The One who brought us from hopelessness, submitting himself to unbelievable suffering and bruising for our iniquities (Is. 53:5). Why, we must seem to God as spiritually crazy and distorted as that poor man in the car with me, when/if we ever begin to blame Him when things go wrong. He’s taking us where we need to go in a far bigger sense than we can even perceive, and all of that, after we bruised Him in a bigger way than we can fathom! And He, unlike me in the imperfect analogy, chose to take the eternal hit!

May we remember the very real and eternal wreck and ruin from which we are able to walk away—from which we are transported— when we may ever think of assigning the blame for pain and sorrow to God. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation (Heb. 2:3)?!

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Sister to Sister: You Can See 44 Quadrillion Miles!

Posted on July 3, 2017

(Note: Some have asked about details for the Digging Deep Israel tour.  We’ve hit a glitch in scheduling, but hopefully we will have those details in a couple of days. We’re thankful for patient friends.)

Sometimes the well is just about dry. I can’t  write a blog post because sleep deprivation has stolen what little mental capacity I had in the first place. Putting together a thought is challenging, much less transferring to the written word.  I know there are many of you who have had challenging seasons of life  and you are there with me. Well, maybe not as mentally depleted, but YOU started with a greater mental capacity BEFORE the drain. (Don’t get me wrong…I love the drain because it means I get to spend time with my father, who is 94 years old. The challenge is a privilege in the lives of my dad’s children. It’s a blessing, albeit a very depleting one.)

Allen Webster, at the Jacksonville church of Christ in Jacksonville, Alabama, yesterday, reminded us that we can see further in the darkness than we can in the daylight hours. (You can watch those lessons here and I’d recommend them: http://jvillecoc.com/sermons.) We can see the sun in the daytime, of course, and that sun is about 93 million miles away. It’s pretty impressive how far we can see when we’re looking for light. But, oh, at night!…When we are in the darkness and looking for light, we can see stars that are 7500 light years away. The star Eta Carinae is over 44,000,000,000,000,000 miles away and we can see it with the naked eye! Can you marvel with me at how much farther we can see in the darkness than we can in the daylight? 

When we look for the light that is Jesus Christ, we can often see Him better in the dark times of life. When we are looking for heaven’s hope, we see it perfunctorily in sickness, sorrow, loneliness or death. When things are going our way…when living the Christian life seems pretty easy…when we’ve “got this”, sometimes we stop looking so hard for His Will and for heaven. We pray more in the darkness. We praise more in the darkness. We study more in the darkness and we see the needs of those around us more when we experience need ourselves. 

One more thing about challenging times: This week I received some very vitriolic messages from a friend who just can’t stand this blog or the things I write and teach. I mean she really hates them. Perhaps she is right in some of her judgments. But the point I want to make is not about who is right. The exchange just got me thinking…this: 

We should all be careful about the tone with which we approach each other with criticism or confrontation. I, Cindy Colley, should be always careful about HOW I say the things I say, especially when they are things with which many will vehemently disagree. You never know exactly what kind of day or week your adversary may have had. You may be unaware of personal challenges she may be encountering. She could be in the darkness, looking for light at the end of her tunnel. While we may be forced to express oppositional views, let’s give each other grace. Let’s put words and actions on the parts of those with whom we disagree in the best possible light, even assuming their paths may be difficult at the moment. I may be able to  help someone to heaven without blurting out that she is headed for hell at the get-go. I can help someone have a cool head, but not if I’m biting off said head. I can help someone know truth, but not if I know-it-ALL. There’s righteous judgment to be made, of course, and I must be discerning. But putting myself in the shoes, for a moment, of the one I’m addressing, will help me speak with the tone that will be most likely to truly help toward heaven. In short, I must WANT to sit down beside her around the throne and every communication must be toward that eternal end.