Hi
Are you familiar with the term, “Going to hell in a handbasket”? What do you think it means? Although Google offers some pretty gruesome details on its origin, the pundits are in consensus that it means one’s situation is dire, and is destined for disaster. Could that be how Job’s friends felt when they really assessed his situation? Is it likely that their predictions about Job originated from an inability to fathom the roots of Job’s crisis? How would we respond to the persistent doom and gloom predictions about and around us?
Dipping sauce perhaps, for today’s Holy Nougat™
“I have heard all this before. What miserable comforters you are! Job 16:2 NLT
I really respect Job’s patience. Sometimes, I think I would have tried to assist the Lord rather than sit with the sameness of those friends’ ongoing criticism. But it must have rankled. And after the third or fourth go round of my faults, hmm. I suspect I’d have begun questioning the nature of the ones I call friends.
But what happens when we’re the ‘friends’ who are simply calling things as we see it? When we are convinced that the misfortune surrounding our family member, colleague, ministry partner, minister, sister/brother in the Faith is self-inflicted? What if we’ve got reason to believe s/he is reaping the harvest of past sinful seed sown? Would we remain safely silent or do we harp on the obvious? And when the object, or is it subject, of our judgements gets tired of hearing us, what then is our recourse?
Friends, let us not send our selves to hell in a handbasket, let us be known for our focus on the generosity of others. We could be ambassadors of Hope (Helping Others Pursue Eternity). And with that Hope, we draw others to the Source of our optimism.
May God’s grace push past little negativism molehills up to God’s transformational mountains …
Thanks for joining in this Divine feast
In Christ’s love and grace . . .
