A "Fall" Day

Today is a beautiful fall day in LA: blue skies, puffy white clouds, and crisp air. I just had lunch with Dan, Ashley and Jessica after attending church with them. Dan is tolerating his last chemotherapy treatment without any untoward effects for which we are very grateful. Football is on TV and a football enthusiast is coming over to watch the Sunday games with him - that’s cool. I am staying with my mom who is doing much better and my sister from up north is visiting also. My sister, who is recovering from being run over by a bus almost 8 months ago, is doing great! As we took a walk together yesterday I thanked God for bringing her from the brink of death to walking on her own. Many praises to the Lord for His mercy and healing.
Why do bad things happen? We live in a fallen world to be sure as the pastor was discussing this morning. But we can get stuck on the “why, me?” I thank my husband (of almost 24 years) for helping me answer that question in a conversation we had while we were dating. We were talking about the death of a friend of his, a gifted, young doctor who was involved in a helicopter transport accident of a sick baby. The entire crew was killed. The pilot was drunk. We discussed “why”. Bob so eloquently helped me see that “why” is not the question to ask, because there is no adequate answer this side of heaven. The question should be “in light of these events, what should our thoughts and actions be?”
From that time on, God has graciously helped me to accept difficult situations and not focus on the “why”. “Why” has not been part of my thoughts these last few months as we struggle with Dan’s illness. We are here and it does not matter how or why we got here, but we need to go forward and not get stuck looking back.
I heard an analogy that there is a good reason a car has a large front windshield and a small rear view mirror. You can envision what would happen on the freeway if we kept our focus on our rear view mirror and forgot to look ahead of us. Not to say you never look back in that little mirror, but only to adjust where you are going ahead. Sometimes it is easy to get stuck in the past events and the “whys” of life. God wants us to praise Him in the midst of our life, whatever our circumstances may be, and know He is using all our circumstances to form the character of our Lord Jesus in us and reveal His glory here on earth.
For those of you who want to hear the amazing perspective of a woman who broke her neck 40 years ago at the age of 16 and is living her life as a quadriplegic, please go to the following link and listen as she spoke last week to the student body at Biola University. Her name is Joni Earacksen Tada. (Bring Kleenex)

http://www.biola.edu/news/centennial%2Dchapels/

Verses to ponder:
Romans 5:1-8
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

2 Corinthians 5:17-21
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.