Whac a Mole

So many times, when bad things happen, Hurricanes, Tornado's, Businesses being bailed out by the Fed, layoffs, financial turmoil in a nation or more, it's easy for us to ask if we are being punished. It's easy to think God may be playing Whac-a-Mole with a people or a nation. He's not. Bad things have happened throughout the years. They will happen again.

While it can be so easy to fall into a Charlie Brown mentality and say "Why is everyone (or everything) picking on me?" We can look for opportunity in the middle of the mess. "Ah, but your being Pollyannish, you don't know what I'm going through!" You're right, I don't know. What I do know, is this...

Over the past few years, I've watched our nation go through attacks, natural disasters, financial upheaval. We struggle with the fact that we have men and women overseas defending, not just our freedom, but that of others. It's hard to watch our children, brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles and neighbors put their lives on the line for things we don't always know.

I know that our nation and our people choose to come out of these things stronger, than they went in. There is something amazing about the volunteers, from all different walks of life, individuals, different volunteer or religious organizations, even businesses or corporations, breaking out of the mold and volunteering or giving to pull their neighbors in another state or country out of the muck.

We become stronger as a people as a result of these times. When we go through fire, we have that choice. We can use it to change, grow and move forward or cower and run. The nation I know, doesn't do that. Yes, we have our weaknesses, but we have our strengths too. We have the ability as a people, as a nation, to stand up and choose good. The biggest mistake that those who would try to come after us make, is they underestimate the strength of our spirits. They underestimate the power of our people.

They think that when we are down, that means we are out. We aren't out, we are getting back up, stronger than before that hard time. Ready to live in victory.

One of the coolest things that I've learned as a Christian, is that sometimes God allows us to go through valley's, sometimes he allows us to walk in the furnace, so he can refine us, like gold, and get out the dross, the waste. But He doesn't leave us, He is there with us in the furnace, there with us in the valley. That hard time, that valley is simply training for the mountaintop.



Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

Share a smile. Today is a new day of hope, we can move forward, through the valley, to the mountain.