Trust God – Page 4

Love Triangle in the Southern Sky

September 3, 2016

Mother nature is putting on a show! Tonight if the sky is clear, go out during the evening between 8:00 and 10:00 and face south-southwest. You’ll see a triangle of three stars. Well, only one of them, the one on the bottom of the triangle, is actually a star. Its name is Antares and it’s in the constellation Scorpius.

The reddish-colored one on the top left is the planet Mars. The one on the top right is the planet Saturn. This configuration will change slightly from night to night because planets change their positions in relation to the stars and each other. This is why they’re called planets, which means “wanderers.” A week or so ago, these three objects formed a perpendicular line, but our sky here in the Chicago area was cloudy, so I missed that. Within the next few nights, watch the crescent moon gradually come into the picture as well.

You may notice that Mars and Saturn don’t twinkle the way Antares does. That’s because planets don’t produce their own light. Like the moon, they reflect light from the sun. Stars are like our sun, big balls of fire, which causes them to twinkle. I have always enjoyed the study of astronomy – not the scientific part so much as just knowing the patterns and watching their movements through the course of the year. The five planets that are visible to the naked eye are fascinating to observe. Once you know they’re the ones that don’t twinkle, they’re easy to spot.

Genesis 1:14 tells us God put the stars in the sky to be a sign for seasons. The movements of the planets are so predictable that scientists can tell us right now where each one can be seen on any future date. This predictability of “sun moon and stars in their courses above”* reminds me of God’s faithfulness. The beauty of the heavenly objects speaks of his love for us. Even in the night sky we can discover God’s goodness in everyday life.

*Song: “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” by William M. Runyan, verse 3

Ceiling Surprise

August 22, 2016

Imagine how my nephew Jon must have felt when he walked into the house I rent in Arizona and saw this! The home belongs to my sister and her husband who live in California, and Jon keeps an eye on it when it’s not rented out. He was there earlier that day, and everything looked fine. Little did any of us know an air conditioner drainpipe had come apart at a seam, allowing water to drip onto the ceiling below. Eventually the water-logged plaster collapsed and fell to the floor, ceiling fan and all. Who knows how long the pipe had been like that? It was probably broken while I was living there last winter, but since I only ran the AC for a few hours a day, the plaster had time to dry out between times and the damage went undetected.

Ordinarily the AC isn’t running while the house is vacant, but my sister and her husband had been there three weeks before, meeting with contractors to arrange a face-lift for the house. Because workmen would be in and out, they kept the AC turned on when they left. If it hadn’t been running for those three weeks, the damage wouldn’t have occurred until after I arrived in November, ruining some of the work that was done during the summer, and I would have had to find a place to stay while repairs were completed. The original plans didn’t include replacing the carpet or the ceiling, so now the house I’ll return to in November will be even nicer than what was originally planned. Fortunately they have good insurance, so it wasn’t a financial disaster, and no one was in the house when the ceiling fell, so there were no injuries.

Romans 8:28 comes to mind. “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” While a collapsed ceiling is not a good thing, much good came from the situation, and it’s easy to see God’s timing and protection. However, another verse spoke to me even louder as I thought about what had occurred: “Catch us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes” (Song of Solomon 2:15). These were just little drops of water – drip, drip, drip – but because no one stopped them, they accumulated till eventually a whole big ceiling was ruined, causing major destruction.

How does this apply to our lives? One way is in our thinking patterns. If we allow small, seemingly harmless, negative thoughts to stay in our minds instead of catching them, “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5), they can fester and accumulate in our hearts, waterlogging our attitudes and emotions. Left unchecked, those attitudes and emotions will lead to wrong actions, causing serious damage to our own lives and those of the people around us.

Destructive emotions like anger, envy, and depression do not just happen. They are the results of thinking patterns we have allowed to develop over time. We need to guard our hearts. If we find any little foxes that have managed to sneak in, we must catch and kill them! God is ready to help us with the killing if we bring those foxes to Him.

(No real animals were killed – nor was such a thing advocated – in the writing of this post.)