Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Bugs

I know it is happening to you and for sure it is happening to me.  Just when the gnats get a little better and we remark, "It is less buggy today!" they come.  Millions of them.  Giving up their little lives on the windshields and hoods of our cars.  We all hate them (except probably the birds who get a windfall of fast food).  Love bugs.  I have made trips to Dothan over the past two days and my car is covered with the little reminders of the nasty little things.  You could wash your car every day and they would still be bad.  The longer the trip the worse the bugs.

The epidemic of love bugs remind me of something.  Do you remember the old song "Sometimes You're the Windshield and Sometimes You're the Bug?"  The image here is that sometimes you in control and on top of the world and other times life seems to run you over and leave you damaged, stunned and hurting.  I think this is why God's Word, in Ecclesiastes 3, says "There is a time for every purpose under heaven."  The writer is saying, much more eloquently that the country song, that life is filled with events we do not control, do not desire and would rather not experience.  Yet life happens anyway ... and the passage ends with an exhortation (paraphrased) that goes something like this ... "Work through the ups and downs of life (including those things past that we cannot seem to leave behind) and remember that life is a gift from God.  See those things that are beautiful, whether you are looking from the perspective of the windshield or whether you are looking from the perspective of the bug.  In the end, God is still in charge and still bringing you home.  And what God does trumps all the bad things life throws our way."

In the end we are not defined by whether we are the windshield or whether we are the bug.  We are defined by the God we choose to serve.  We will talk Sunday about Joshua's urgent reminder that we are making that choice today ... every day.  In Joshua 24:15 he tells his people "Choose today whom you will serve."  Maybe we are flying around blindly like that bug, just existing and thinking that there is no tomorrow.  Then it hits ... life, the windshield, pain, death, sickness, hurt ... and we thought we had all the time in the world.  Joshua's reminder is that the time to make the choice for God is now ... not tomorrow.  After this speech, Joshua dies at the ripe old age of 110, a life well lived and a God well chosen!  Pastor Randy

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