SEVERAL TURNING POINTS IN LIFE
Cats are said to have nine lives. I had one cat, Snowy, who totally changed in personality once he met his first dog, Spike.
Before the dog, Snowy was kind of slow. He wasn’t as smart as the other cats
(or so it seemed). But the other cats passed away and Spike, the dog, came into
our lives. Snowy decided he was going to be a dog. He ate dog food, went
outside with the dog and even lifted his leg to pee like the dog! And he seemed
to be so much smarter than before. I
think we humans go through several life changes as well when we come to the end of something or the beginning, where
we make hard choices that alter our futures. We don’t know until after, which ones will be the ones that make
the biggest difference.
I experienced one of those in college.
Carbondale University of Illinois May 1970. I
stood in the crowd of protesters chanting, “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is going
to win.” I picked up a rock and threw it as hard as I could. The minute it flew
from my hand I was jolted! “What am I
doing?” I’d gone too far.
I was throwing a baseball-sized rock into a
line of police officers, not even
thinking who or what it could hit. I quickly backed out of the crowd of
protesters and retreated to the trailer. I waited for my friends. I was silent
on the trip home.
When I got back to my dorm, I had some real
soul searching to do. I’d come to one of those crossroads. If I stayed with the
friends, my whole life would have been entirely
different. I was afraid of the person I’d become. I didn’t recognize her. I had
to abandon my protester friends and began to look inward and to the Bible for
answers. The next semester at school was lonely.
At some point,
we all come to crossroads where we honestly need to ask ourselves, “Why am I
doing this?” And then we need to answer ourselves just as honestly.
Second Kings 7 tells us about four lepers who
were in that predicament. The enemy was coming from without the city, and there was a great famine within the city.
They just sat there. Finally, they
woke up and “they said one to another, ‘Why sit
we here until we die?’” (v.3). They realized they were foolish just sitting there and waiting to die. Instead,
a tiny spark of hope motivated them to get up
and take action, no matter what the consequences.
They decided that they’d make
a move toward the enemy camp and just maybe there was a very slight chance
something good would happen. As it turned out, hope won. As the lepers went out, the enemy thought they heard a great
army coming against them, and they fled.
“And when these lepers came
to the uttermost part of the camp, they went into one tent, and did eat and
drink, and carried thence silver, and gold, and
raiment” (v.7). The lepers found the
enemy camp empty of soldiers, but full of food and wealth. Four lepers saved themselves
and the whole city.
Hoping for something better is a great Biblical
attitude. Being Christians, we should always be
hopeful. If a person is hopeful in God, he is practicing the good faith. Faith
in a better future is a reason to be happy in the present. Psalm 146: 5 tells
us: “Happy is he . . . whose hope is in
the Lord.”
We aim
to do God’s will, and God assures us things
will work out. We carry hope for a better future with this wonderful proclamation
from God: “Being confident of this very thing,
that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of
Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).
The one and only Almighty God, the Creator of
all things, loves us. We can trust Him to
help us, especially when we face those life-changing decisions.
Love, Carolyn
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