Responses to a Bad Day

Ever have one of “those” days? You know the kind. Your favourite pair of jeans rip. You try a new fitness class and can’t get your feet to move in the right direction at the right time. You think the cold your son has been harboring has finally caught up to you. Someone shows up for a meeting you forgot you had arranged.Your vision starts to go funny and you contact the eye doctor only to find out that you are probably about to have a migraine. How do you respond to that? My natural response is to start to feel sorry for myself, which just makes me more miserable with myself and everyone else around me –a very slippery slope.


I found myself there this week and caught myself just as I was about to start feeling sorry for myself. I remembered reading in my morning devotional that we need to remember that trials can be a gift from God because that is when the most growth occurs in our lives. So I reluctantly turned to God and asked for forgiveness for my attitude and an opportunity to have a glimpse of what good He might be using this for. I am still not sure I see the good, but I guess not all prayers get answered the way we want. I realize that what some of you are facing today far out ways my bad day and I pray that God will meet you in your difficulty and give you peace. For the rest of you I pray that two left feet is the worst that your day will hold.

Please pray that I will get my voice back before tomorrow might when we are supposed to be presenting at a banquet and that I will be healthy for our vacation next week. Pray also for Dave as he has been really struggling to get his papers written before we go away so that he can have a good vacation and not have work hanging over his head. Pray that Cole and Ben are able to have a really good break, they really need it!

Oh, that also means that there probably won’t be a blog next week while we are away.

Thoughts from Habakkuk

“Look at the nations and watch—

and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
that you would not believe,

even if you were told.” Hab. 1:5

I was struck by this verse this morning when we did family devotions. It made me wonder if part of our problem today isn’t that we don’t take the time to see God’s hand at work in our lives, or that we are too caught up in ourselves to notice when God is working, or maybe we just don’t expect God to work in miraculous or wonderful ways any more. But then I realized that I was taking the verse out of context because the chapter seems to suggest that the amazing work that God is doing is using the Babylonians?? It is hardly what the average Jewish reader would have been wanting or looking for. They wouldn’t believe it because they would never consider that God would use their enemies in such a way. Is it possible that God might be doing something similar today. I look back at the world events of 2011 and I am amazed at what has happened in so many different places around the globe, both economically& politically. Even things like the crazy weather that we have had this winter where Asia and Europe are having the cold that would normally be in Canada and we are experiencing such warm temperatures. It makes me wonder what God is doing or how it all works. It is a really good thing that He is in control and knows the big picture, because I know that I couldn’t begin to handle it.

Please pray for Dave as he tries to write papers for his latest course. He lost his glasses yesterday and is working with his older ones (a little scratched from their time in Niger, but at least it is better than nothing). Special thanks to the folks at Harrowsmith for the offering they took for the new Ministry Centre.