TRIALS UPON THE SHOULDERS

I wish there was a way to avoid these situations in life, but no matter who we are life will always have some kind of challenge. I have a feeling it doesn’t take most of us very long to figure that part out. Nor does it take long to find out that life isn’t necessarily a system where rewards and punishment are based up you getting what you deserve.

Such inequity is a reality that has stirred many over the unfairness of life and drives a person in many directions. Some turn to God, others to something else for answers. Yet no matter where we turn, it doesn’t spare us from that circumstantial grind.

So we end up, don’t we, on settling for the foundation of strength that helps get us through a day. If it works in our mind then that is what we will lean upon regardless of how somebody else views it.

On a spiritual level, it is sad when Christian falls under the “settle for” category. It just seems to lose the luster of sincerity and passion when it is something you accept for any reason that genuine faith and desire. The absence of a real relationship with our Lord and Savior and simply having made a choice for other reason never seems to provide satisfaction from what I’ve noticed.

Last night I was sitting at my computer when somebody knocked on my door. This wasn’t a simple tapping. It was more like the police pounding on my door before they were planning a raid.

Well, I turned on the porch light and check through the front door peephole. It wasn’t the cops. And the man didn’t look particularly threatening so I opened the door.

As it turned out he was going door to door and passing out flyers about the church he attended. No problem for me.

The only thing though was I didn’t detect any joy in his actions. His face was hard, his eyes stern and cold. When he asked me about being a Christian it was more as if he was grilling me for answers instead of simply asking a question. I didn’t detect any happiness in his spirit over what he was doing.

Perhaps he was just preparing himself for a negative reaction. That can happen so easily when you are talking to people about Jesus.

Still, after I told him I was a Christian, there was no reaction of relief or even a smile of joy that he had met another brother in the lord. Instead he was grimaced and apparently disappointed that he didn’t have a chance to engage in a battle for conversation. So even though I wished for him the “Lord’s blessings,” he turned and walked way without another comment.

Maybe life does carry burdens. But at the core I think we too create some of our own. I pray we don’t let it turn out relationship with the Lord into some cold and lifeless troubling stone!