Praise the Lord for this Thursday.
We are just a week away from the day of Thanksgiving, a great day of giving
thanks to the Lord of creation and the Lord of our redemption. We have ample
reasons to celebrate and to rejoice. We come before the Lord of the earth as a
Thankful and grateful people.
I read once that the Devil was
having a yard sale, and all of his tools were marked with different prices.
They were a fiendish lot. There was hatred, jealously, deceit, lying, and
pride—all at expensive prices. But over to the side of the yard on display was
a tool more obviously worn than any of the other tools. It was also the most
costly. The tool was labeled, DISCOURAGEMENT. When questioned, the Devil said, "It's more useful to me than any other
tool. When I can't bring down my victims with any of the rest of these tools, I
use discouragement, because so few people realize that it belongs to
me."
The enemy of joy is discouragement.
It causes a person to want to quit. If we're going to learn to live productive
lives, we've got to learn to overcome discouragement. The more discouragement a
person can overcome, in a sense, the greater that person is.
According to my wife, Alice, the
greatest American president is Abraham Lincoln. His life is a great example of
life lived under the grace love of the Lord with gratitude and Thanksgiving,
tenacity and endurance. When he was 7 years of age, his family was forced out
of their home, and he went to work. When he was 9, his mother died. He lost
his job as a store clerk when he was 20. He wanted to go to law school, but he
didn't have the education. At age 23 he went into debt to be a partner in a
small store. Three years later the business partner died, and the resulting
debt took years to repay.
When he was 28, after courting a
girl for four years, he asked her to marry him, and she turned him down. On his
third try he was elected to Congress, at age 37, but then failed to be
re-elected. His son died at 4 years of age. When this man was 45, he ran for
the Senate and lost. At age 47 he ran for the vice-presidency and lost. But at
age 51 he was elected president of the United States.
Abraham Lincoln learned to face
discouragement and move beyond it. In the midst of the Civil War in 1863,
Lincoln established the annual celebration of Thanksgiving. Lincoln had learned
how important it is to stop and thank God in the midst of great
difficulties.
The psalmist caught this spirit in
Psalm 97 when he reminds us that whatever is going on, the Lord reigns and the
Earth should be glad. As long as God rules, I can be joyful. God is over all
things. He's not responsible for all things, but he's promised to work through
all things and bring good to those who trust him. It's not unusual for God to
use the very worst developments to bring about the best end.
A ship was wrecked, and the only survivor washed up on a small, uninhabited island. He was exhausted. He cried out to God to save him. Every day he scanned the horizon, searching for help. Finally, he managed to build a rough hut and put his few articles in that hut. One day, coming home from hunting for food, he was stung with grief to see his little hut in flames and a cloud of smoke. The worst had happened. But early the next day, a ship drew in and rescued him. He asked the crew, "How did you know I was here?"
They replied, "We saw your smoke
signal."
Maybe the difficulty we may be
experiencing now is a smoke signal that will lead to a greater
blessing.
In Christ,
Brown.
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