Tom's Message: "Disappoint Our Fears!"
What a beautiful weekend ahead!!
80’s and sunny!
It’s hard to believe that Home Depot is already full of Christmas stuff! It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! And with the summer-like temps, all I can think of is that Bing Crosby Christmas classic, “Mele Kalikimaka”!
“Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say
On a bright Hawaiian Christmas day…
Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaii's way
To say Merry Christmas to you!”
Speaking of the Season sneakin’ up on us, are they really running for President again??
Didn’t we just go thru that?!
It is kinda amazing to me how confident those candidates are as they offer their services to our nation! I personally couldn’t imagine ever…even in my dreams…feeling like, “The toughest, most complicated job in all the world? No problem! I got this!”
Wouldn’t surprise me if some of the ones who finally got that job found out…looking down that hallway towards the Oval Office…it would turn out to be just a little more difficult than they anticipated!
But just the boldness to even think they could do it is a wonder to me!
Not all of them have always felt that way, however!
When our 20th President, James A. Garfield…
the only President who was an ordained minister...
(tho’ loads of folks loved Jimmy Carter’s Sunday School class!)
was dying…
the Vice-President, Chester A. Arthur (“A” was apparently a popular middle initial back in the day!) had never had any political experience. He was kind of a puppet of a huge, corrupt political boss…the guy who put the “boss” back in “bossy”!… named Roscoe Conklin, and he’d been handed the VP job as a favor to ol’ Roscoe.
When it seemed obvious that Pres. Garfield wasn’t gonna pull through, no one could find Chester!
After looking all over, they found him in his room with the lights out and his face in his hands…
”His eyes were blood shot, and rimmed with tears, and it was clear from the streaks on his face that he had been crying…”
“I can’t do this! I don’t want to do this! I didn’t know being the Vice Prez means you might have to be the President!!”
In the darkness days of his dread, doubt, despair and disconsolation (I love that word!), he got a letter in the mail.
And then another. And another!
In all, twenty-three letters. He kept every one!
They came unexpectedly from a thirty-two year old, bed-ridden woman he’d never met who lived in New Jersey. She just wanted to encourage him and to tell him that, if no one else did, she believed in him!
She wrote stuff like…
“The people are bowed in grief; but – do you realize it? – not so much because he is dying, as because you are his successor…But great emergencies awaken generous traits which have lain dormant half a life. If there is a spark of true nobility in you, now is the occasion to let it shine! Faith in your better nature forces me to write to you – to beg you to do what is most difficult- be brave!…”
“Once in awhile there comes a crisis which renders miracles feasible. The great tidal wave of sorrow which has rolled over the country has swept you loose from your old moorings & set you on a mountaintop!
Disappoint our fears!
Force the nation to have faith in you!…
As yet I have not met anybody who believes in you, as I do.”
“Do you remember what sort of man Lincoln was? He was alive in every fibre – he grew from day to day – he was a larger man in heart & soul & mind, when he died, than he was when he first came into office…I do not like to think of men as blocks of marble, things that may be cut down in the finishing, but cannot be made to expand. I prefer to think of them as things with infinite powers of growth…
I believe you have that power of growth in you!”
Amazingly (or maybe not!) he turned out to be braver and bolder…and better than anyone imagined he ever could be! He stood up to corruption and bossy bosses like few before him!
All because someone encouraged him and saw things in him that he didn’t see himself when he looked in the mirror.
Wouldn’t that be the most wonderful thing??
To have someone who sees things in you that you naturally don’t?
And who tells you about them??
I think you do have this Someone!
Romans 8 says that the Spirit of God Who lives inside is always telling you that you are the Father’s child! (8:16)
And He is always pouring out the Love of God into your heart! (Romans 5:5)
Do you feel it?
And even though you read about how much God loves you and even though you were told that Jesus died for you and would have done it if you had been the only person on earth…
you can still ask Him to give you the power…straight from the Spirit…to FEEL His love!!
(Ephesians 3:14-19…Read it!!! It’s an astounding, breath-taking prayer!!))
To FEEL the Love you’ve read about!!
Ask Him everyday to give you the power to feel His incomprehensible love!
And if you listen quietly…
and intently…
and expectantly…
He will!
(And may I be the first to say, Mele Kalikimaka!)