Tag Archives: government shutdown

Fear

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“What happened?”

I picked myself up off the ground. Everything seemed to still work but how on earth did I wind up face down, arm bleeding? My brother Marvin told me that after I had given Apache his carrot, while I was walking back to the gate, he just turned and ran over me. I never saw it coming.

Apache was the biggest horse I ever had. He was 16 ½ hands tall and easily weighed 1200 pounds. I was 13 years old and a runt.

The day after he ran over me I sat on the fence watching Apache. I had a lead in my hand and I knew what I had to do. I had to walk out there, put a lead on Apache and bring him in so I could ride him. What good is a horse if you can’t ride him?

But I wondered, what if he ran at me again and tried to kill me. What would I do?

I must have sat there a half hour, my heart in my throat. Finally, slowly at first, then with firmer steps I walked toward Apache with a peace offering, a ripe red apple in my outstretched left hand. In my right hand, behind my back I firmly held a baseball bat. I had decided that while I hoped for the best I had to be prepared for the worst. The worst never happened.

Fear. What will happen if the government shuts down, my 401k tanks, I lose my job, I get sick… We all know this scenario. “Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.” (Matthew 6:34)

My greatest fear at thirteen, being run over by that huge horse, never came about. Today our world seems to run on fear. Fear of the shutdown, fear of war, fear of a lack of something or of someone. Everyone is afraid of something.

I didn’t know God well back when Apache ran over me but God was surely with me. Perhaps you don’t feel particularly close to God right now. But God knows you and God loves you just as you are. What are you afraid of? God knows just what you need. Ask Him. Thank Him.

Stumped

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Stumped

After a morning of chopping, sawing, digging, and prying it is still unmoved!

At first I thought it would be an hour long project. That was before I dug down and looked at what was below the surface.

Let me back up. I cut that tree down over a year ago to make way for planting grapes, blackberries and blueberries. Since then I have repeatedly cut away new growth emerging from an ugly stump barely six inches across. So I decided I would get rid of the thing. How hard could that be?

Before I cut it down this tree did not stand out as different from the others. But on the morning I decided to get rid of its stump I discovered a real difference in this tree just below the surface where no eye had seen. Beneath the surface there were huge roots, nearly as big in diameter as the stump itself stretching in every direction. After cutting each one (with considerable effort) it still would not budge! Obviously, deeper still there are roots holding it in place, tenaciously to the ground in which it once emerged as a tender, young sapling.

This week we learned of yet another mass shooting at a Naval yard in Washington. Other weeks we are faced with healthcare problems or the threat of government shutdowns and war, or a recessionary economy. We struggle with broken homes, wayward children, or a shocking diagnosis from the doctor. The list goes on. How can we be prepared for such a world as this? These problems seem intractable because there is more to them than meets the eye.

I believe the answer is in that tree stump. The word “stumped”, meaning there seems to be no easy solution to a problem, emerged during the days of building our national rail system. As the tracks expanded great trees were encountered. There was no way around removing the stumps but that was easier said than done. The setting of the sun on many days left the workers “stumped” with how to remove them.

Jesus came not as a general, a president or a philanthropist because God knew the solution to a troubled world could not be found in war, politics or finances. Our world is “stumped” because we have not learned to look beneath the surface. When we allow God to probe our hearts and reveal to us our broken human nature which is beneath all our problems we are taking the first steps. Only the God who made us, and who loves us can root out all that keeps our lives and our world broken.