Biblical Perspectives in Everyday Life
Wednesday started out as a not so great day. Actually, the problems started around 10 PM the night before. The temporary crown on my tooth popped out (for the second time in two days) just before I went to bed on Tuesday night. I called the dentist’s office and left a message that I would be there as soon as the traffic would allow on Wednesday morning.
Since I didn’t know when the office opened (it wasn’t on the dentist’s recording), I got ready, then waited for a “decent” hour on a working day (7:40 AM) to call a friend who used to work there and ask if she knew when the office opened. She did know – 8:00 AM – YIKES! Better run!
When I got to our car, all the windows were covered with condensation (a price for living near the ocean). I didn’t have time to run to our upstairs apartment, get the key to the other car (where the squeegee was located), squeegee the windows, and return the key upstairs. Instead, I used the buttons to roll down the windows (automatic) to clean them so I could see well enough to back out of my parking space. It worked, except that one back window in our 13-year-old car refused to roll up. That meant freeway driving with a window down – all the way down. OK, that’s not a problem for a middle-aged woman whose body temperature ranges from hot to hotter. Noisy, but OK.
As I pulled onto the freeway entrance ramp, I could see that the traffic was stopped, and there were a few cars backed up on the ramp waiting for a chance to get on. Aagghhh! All right…still OK, since I didn’t have an actual appointment. After lots of stop-and-go on the freeway, I entered the surface streets near the dentist’s office only to find that the traffic lights were out for miles on a major thoroughfare. While waiting for traffic to move (one car at a time at a four-way stop), I stopped right beside a city crew taking out a huge tree stump. Wood chips started flying into the car through the still-stuck-open back window.
I finally made it to the dentist’s office at 8:15 AM; the car’s interior enveloped with the smell of freshly cut trees. I was informed it would be about half an hour wait. I had read all the magazines I cared to read in the office on my last two visits. (So I already knew how to save money on a Valentine’s dinner – a month after the fact – and all the good things Martha was promoting for us to buy at outrageous prices on her website.) I remembered I had my Bible in the car, so I went out to get it – and to try raising the window again, of course.
Does this sound familiar: “He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul…” You see, I am reading through the Bible chronologically; and, instead of looking at my email to see what I was supposed to be reading, I had plowed on ahead into the books of Samuel, rather than reading the recommended Psalms of David (that he wrote while all those things in the Samuel books were happening). But, the Lord knows what we need and when we need it. Right there, in the dentist’s waiting room, God made me lie [sit] down; He led me beside quiet waters; He restored my soul.
I read verses like this: “This I know, that God is for me” (Psalm 56:9). No matter what happens, I KNOW that God is FOR me…on my side! (As the song says, “Whatever my lot, you have taught me to say, ‘It is well, it is well with my soul.’”) And this: “When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, you knew my path” (Psalm 142:3) and, the beautiful, ever encouraging Psalm 27. There are many, many more Psalms that ministered to my sagging spirit in that waiting room. God knew the days I had endured as well as the coming days I would face, and He made me sit in the waiting room and hear from Him. He restored my soul.
Not all problems are going to be worked out in a WOOHOO! miraculous way, but take heart: God is for you! Often things take a lot longer than we think they should, but God is for you! He knows your path, even when it seems like everything on the path is going wrong. Take courage – wait for the Lord! He knows what we need, when we need it. Let’s not fight against the times when He stops us in our tracks (makes us “lie down”), because our lives are so scheduled and intense we “can’t” (won’t) take the time to be restored. He wants to minister to us…restore our souls. He knows we need it, even when we don’t. And He can creatively (efficiently) use the everyday situations of our lives so that He can work His plan in us.
The window never went up on its own electrical power, and the dealer wanted nearly $600 to fix it – $600 for the rear passenger window on a 13-year-old car! The auto repairman would not just force the window up and brace it so that it would stay up forever. But guess what? My husband “fixed” it! The service manager at the dealership felt sorry for us, and told my hubby how to take the door panel off and what to do. So, the window is up, without even a whistle of wind through it on my freeway drive to work. It’ll never go down again – hopefully. But who needs a window that works? After all, I KNOW this: God is in control, and He is for me! I read it in Psalms.
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Having a “Bad Day”? © 2008 WordTruth, Inc—http://www.wordtruth.net 2 Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, © Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960,1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1988, 1995.