This past summer our family camped in Colorado at Vallecito Lake. It’s a place with a couple of features I miss from my home state of Michigan: water, and the color green. My wife Rose and I were hiking along the water’s edge with our son Ryan and his wife Melissa, and our grandkids, Landyn and Braylin. As we were walking along, Landyn, who was 3 years old, tripped and fell into the water. The scene that immediately followed would have gone viral on YouTube if someone had captured it with a camera.
Melissa spun 180 degrees – why, I do not know – and dove into the water backwards–arched back and all. She grabbed little Landyn and clung to him with all her might, determined to save him from drowning. Here’s the good part: We were standing in water that did not quite come up to my knees. As Melissa clung to Landyn, she was actually holding him under the water. I reached down and rescued him from his mother’s grip, and she stood up. She was frantically flailing in the water because she thought Landyn was in over his head.
The whole scene was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen. But then when I started thinking about the lesson I could learn from this experience, I realized I’ve done the same thing, only not in the water. How often do we flail around in our despair because of something we believe that is not true? In most instances, it’s our fear of circumstances, not the circumstances themselves, that take us under.
We all make decisions everyday about what we will choose to believe. The world around us is saturated with lies about what really matters in life. And lies about God, and lies that mock our need to surrender our way for his way. Unless we are standing on the firm foundation of God’s eternal promises, we will waste too much time flailing in the knee-deep water of our own silly imagination. Let this be a “stand up” day!
“In his kindness God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus. So after you have suffered a little while, he will restore, support, and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation.” ~ 1 Peter 5:10
Rod & Rose 