Something Infinitely Better

I love Sundays. I love wondering what perfect message God might wrap in a sermon. I love the big fat Sunday newspaper. When it is warm outside, I even love the one time a week when I put on a dress to go to church. But this Sunday, I will be hunkering down with several cups of tea and my jar of Vicks Vaporub. Even if I felt well enough to leave the house, which I don't, I would not want to expose others to this nasty cold.

 I did discover why God gave me such a congested nose yesterday, however, so I am not complaining. It was the middle of the night, and I thought I smelled something rather awful, but being so very congested, decided it was my imagination. Then, when day broke and I walked out of my room, I was sure I smelled something awful. For a smell to permeate the solid gunk blocking my nasal passageways, it must be something exceedingly putrid. That's when I saw a big pile of watery poop. I had thought Honeybun looked a little under the weather last night, and she had gone to bed early in my closet, her favorite "den". I also went to bed early so the door got shut and she must not have gone out for her last evening business walk. She has never ever done this before, so I suspect she ate something she shouldn't have and it violently insisted on exiting her body.

If I had not had a cold, I don't think I could have cleaned that disgusting mess up. I gathered, and scrubbed, and disinfected, with barely a tear. I could with all honesty thank God for my cold and my stuffed up nose. Sometimes bad things are preventing you from worse things. You just never know, so to be on the safe side, praise God in all things.

Asherel is learning this lesson. She is spending countless hours on her trebuchet and helicopters for Science Olympiad. She has almost no free time, and as our contest date approaches, she recognizes that she has no choice but to give up her weekends to work on those projects.  This is bad, but not as bad as walking out in front of all those people on competition day, throwing the helicopter in the air, and having it flutter to the ground for a total flight of .06 seconds. That is worse.

There are countless Biblical examples of people in very bad situations- Joseph in the bottom of a well to be sold into slavery,  baby Moses floating in a tar pitch basket on the Nile, teenage virgin Mary pregnant and her fiancee was not the dad, Jonah in the decomposing acid churn of a fish stomach. My guess is all these folk thought the situation was not particularly to their liking. However, think of the result had they not undergone all those bad things:
1. Joseph's people would have ended up dying of starvation had he not been plucked from the well and ultimately become Pharoah's right hand man.
2. Moses would not have been preserved to go on and lead his people out of slavery and Jews might still be making straw bricks in Egypt
3. Baby Jesus would not have been born to the perfect fulfillment of prophecy and we would not have a Savior.
4. Jonah would not have gone on to preach to the Ninevites who then would not have repented and we would not have one of the best stories in the Bible!

There are countless examples, of which these are just a smattering, but I think God's point is clear, even to this stuffy headed invalid. Bad things only look bad to those of us bound by time and place. But an infinite, timeless God who sees the whole enchilada is probably preserving us not only from something much worse, but preparing us for something infinitely better.

Luke 16:24-26

²⁴ So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’
   ²⁵ “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. ²⁶ And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’