Good morning, friends.
Our verse for today comes from Acts 10:34, “So Peter opened his mouth and said, ‘Truly I understand that God shows no partiality.’”
The movie Shadowlands tells the love story of CS Lewis and his wife Joy, who were married just four brief years before she died of cancer. Connecting and somewhat preparing the audience for the heartbreak which concludes the movie, the story includes many early scenes of Lewis giving lectures at certain functions, most often speaking on the subject of God and the existence of pain and suffering in the world. But when the bad news arrives that Joy is sick and will not be healed, Lewis is left to struggle with the reality that he has heretofore addressed on a mostly academic level. He had boldly proclaimed that God uses pain to rouse a deaf world and draw the unsaved to Him. He said that God was more interested in strong, mature believers than arranging their lives so that they were happy. But now, the worst kind of suffering was only a few feet away, and his heart was crushed. After Joy died, Lewis published a book called A Grief Observed which chronicled his journey down into doubt and back up again to peace and gratitude. He wrote about the real struggles he experienced and the difficult questions he faced, and the path he took to accepting God’s sovereignty and grace as expressed through the few years he cherished with his wife.
Following Joy’s death in the movie, Lewis noted with gut-wrenching clarity, “I’ve just come up against a bit of experience. Experience is a brutal teacher. But you learn. My God, you learn.” Each of us would hope to avoid such a difficult tutor. But once exposed to his hard lesson, we would most certainly desire to learn from God all that He wanted us to know. Peace would come more easily if we could say like Peter, “Truly I understand.” But sometimes, the understanding comes slowly, or seemingly not at all. There is no handbook that details the process to go from where you are to where you wish to be. The journey is one of trust and truth and requires the fullest realization that God is God and we are His creation, but a creation that He loves and redeemed. God will teach if you will learn, and the lesson will mostly reveal how great our God is and how good He is to us.
As we seek Him today, learn from God and continue on your way to understanding.
Have a lovely Wednesday.
#4 Rich Holt
Dad of Ripken, Koy, TrishaJean, Samantha, Kakie Holiday and Raleigh
Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them.
