Last Saturday I almost wrecked my new-to-me car Eleanor (Ellie the Element). It was my own fault. I was driving on Lake Wheeler Road and for some reason decided right then would be a good time to look at and review a pamphlet I just picked up from Staples… I reached down for it, suddenly looked up, and saw I was about to drive off the road! So I swerved hard to the left into the oncoming lane and almost lost control. Then I had to steer hard back to the right and then the left again before resuming a proper course. It was scary! And it was a wake-up call as well.
You see, I have been guilty of distracted driving for too long! While driving, I’m always checking my phone or looking for something, or even worse. Last Saturday was God’s way of saying to me I needed to pay heed and mend my ways.
Message received! But is that really true? Was it God speaking through this event, or merely circumstance – a circumstance caused solely by my own stupidity and carelessness. It really doesn’t matter is what I say!
God did not cause my near accident – I did. But God can speak to me through it. God can use the ordinary (and not as ordinary) events of our lives to communicate to us. It is in the midst of our normal, everyday lives that He is made known to us and revealed.
Moses is an example to us. Our OT reading this coming Sunday is from Exodus 3, the account of the burning bush. A burning bush is spectacular and extraordinary, I readily grant that! Yet before the burning bush there was Moses all alone, tending the sheep of Jethro just as he always had. For Moses, the day began as any other day – a day of sheep and wilderness and isolation under the hot sun. Moses liked it that way, for he had something to run from and something to hide. He had done so for years, and now in old age he probably thought he would die safely in obscurity and potential unfilled.
God had other ideas! So God interrupted Moses’ monotonous self exile in a miraculous way. Yet the extraordinary came to him in the midst of the commonplace and every day. And so it is with us.
My near accident was no burning bush. Quite the contrary, it was a foreseeable outcome and consequence of distracted driving. I am fortunate and blessed I didn’t roll over and total Ellie. I am blessed there didn’t happen to be a car coming toward me when I reflexively jerked the car into the oncoming lane. Even predictable outcomes and events can carry aspects (dare I say Elements…?) of the divine!
My near accident carried with it a message from God. I am convinced of that, for God can speak to us in and through circumstances of all kinds. And the message has been received. I am resolved now to put the phone away, stop messing around, and pay greater attention to the road ahead. I hope I stick with it and carry out my resolve. I need to! Help hold me accountable, please!
Through which circumstances and events in your life might God be speaking to you?
Alpha Ad & YOU
We have recently created an ad on Face Book to help us promote Alpha, which is coming to CTR beginning September 17th.
The ad is a great tool, but you can help us get the word out even more!
Here’s what you can do:
-If you haven’t done so already, join our CTR Face Book page at https://www.facebook.com/ChurchRezFuquay/
-In the Upcoming Events section, find the Alpha Course posting
https://www.facebook.com/events/882316728601182/?acontext=%7B%22action_history%22%3A%22[%7B%5C%22surface%5C%22%3A%5C%22page%5C%22%2C%5C%22mechanism%5C%22%3A%5C%22page_upcoming_events_card%5C%22%2C%5C%22extra_data%5C%22%3A[]%7D]%22%2C%22has_source%22%3Atrue%7D
-Please share, like, comment upon, respond to a comment – do anything you can to get Alpha to show up on your feed so that your FB friends will see it!
The above is easy to do, and who knows what God might do through it?
See you Sunday!
-Bill
