“I can’t believe it doesn’t bother me so much.”
That’s what Beth said to me when she told me about the house deal that had fallen through. She and her husband and two kids were living with her parents, desperate to get their own house. She had been so excited when the opportunity came to buy a house. She was counting on it to make their life better. But then it fell through.
You know what really surprised her?
She had a peace about it. A kind of peace that she had never really had about anything. Something had changed. About her. Not her circumstances.
Beth had recently come to realize that there might be a God who was real and who loved her. She had come to believe that those nice stories about Jesus that she had heard growing up were more life-giving and relevant than she could ever have imagined. That Jesus, God’s Son, was ready to give her a new life by making her a new person who could actually know God.
And she knew that she was different because instead of being wracked with anxiety about her future, she was confident and peaceful. And it made her laugh at who she was becoming.
This Sunday, we will look at the Bible passage that says that it is possible to have confidence and peace when we might expect to be controlled by fear and anxiety. It has something to do with learning to be a thankful person. The passage is found in Philippians 4:2-7.
I am more and more aware that the demands and pressures of our lives, the problems we encounter have the power to reduce us to less than human. We become frantic critters, or worse, well-oiled machines, churning out our days at enormous rpms.
Sunday we will have a training session on how to make the choices that lift us above the noise and the whirr of this craziness we call living.
And it will be fun.
As a warm-up bring your family out to Chestnut Ridge today at 3:00 for the Big Fall Hang Out.
It will be great for your nature deficit.