Why Did This Happen To Me?
Remember how in Fredric Forsyth’s action thriller Day Of The Jackal the assassin smuggled the sniper rifle close to French President Charles deGaulle?
Well, I’ve got me a pair of those… not sniper rifle, but the camouflage device.
During my scheduled doctor’s appointment Wednesday, after we’d talked about important things, I decided to mention the board I dropped on my foot last week. The doctor had me remove my shoe. He has ordered that I keep all weight off my foot and do nothing for at least a week before seeing him again because he wants to consult a specialist over my x-rays. A cast or foot surgery may lie in my near future. The doctor wants me to use either crutches or a wheelchair until our next appointment.
Seems that I cracked a metatarsal lengthways.
This is a pain in the ass… and the foot.
I have other plans!
Being a person who looks for spiritual realities in everyday life I’m questioning why God would let such an awful thing happen to me?
Doesn’t He know that I’m one of the good guys?
Apparently not.
When a bad thing happens to me – like cracking a bone in my own stupid foot, for instance – I ponder five possible reasons it may have happened:
* 1. This happened to me because there is something God wants me to do – Like maybe He’s enforcing that I sit at my computer and finish rewriting Strangers instead of gallivanting about (which is how I busted my foot).
* 2. This happened because there is something God wants me to avoid – Like for instance, Ginny & I planned a trip to celebrate our 38th anniversary next week, but if I can’t drive then we may avoid killing someone on the road or being mangled in an accident ourseves. So perhaps God is using this bad thing to save me from a worse thing.
* 3. This happened to me as the natural consequence of my doing something stupid.—Like trying to carry four boards instead of one because I didn’t want the guys I was working with to think I’m a wimp so one of the boards slipped from my arms and whacked my own foot. Jesus saves us from our sin, not our stupidity.
* 4. This happened to me, not because of God, but because of physics and physiology – Like, put your foot on a concrete slab, raise a ?? pound board four feet in the air above your toe, and let it go. Board, concrete and foot all obey the laws of physics and physiology which God instituted at the foundation of creation. The board hurt my foot because I live in a created world where it’s my responsibility to move my foot.
* 5. Maybe this happened to me because God is punishing me for something. Now that could be. Heaven knows over the years (Heck, this past week) I’ve done enough stuff deserving of punishment. But I find it hard to imagine God resorting to a sort of celestial hot foot to put me in line; actions do have consequences -- but I just don’t see Him as that sort of person.
He looks at my aching foot and feels my pain.
He feels every pain we ever suffer.
He knows what it is to hurt.
He know how much an injured foot can hurt.
After all, both of His were nailed down.
His hands too.
And while my injury may be attributed to any (or all) of the five reasons I’ve mentioned above --numbers three and four seem especially prominent -- the pain Jesus suffered when he spread out his hands on the hard wood of the cross came about because of only one reason…
What do you suppose that reason was?
You’re right!
You’re absolutely right.
Please, visit my website for more www.cowart.info and feel free to look over and buy one of my books www.bluefishbooks.info
posted by John Cowart @ 6:32 AM
4 Comments:
I am being well cared for. Pat and my daughter Jennifer, a registered nurse, swooped in yesterday and took over. They washed dishes, made coffee, adjusted my crutches, fed a bum who came begging at our door, moped the kitchen, put out the garbage, brought me a new robe, moved furniture, and bossed me around to no end. Jennifer says she’s making up for the way I treated her when she was a helpless child.
While I was in the doctor’s waiting room, a whiter-haired, feeble old lady was wheeled in. She directed her daughter or attendant who was pushing her chair to stop at each end table in the waiting room. She laboriously dug in her purse at each stop and placed a tract on each table with great effort. I recognized the tracts as the same ones Ginny & I had blithely handed out in droves Halloween night. To do what we had done effortlessly cost this old lady great pain and energy. God bless her.
...and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
I think it is funny that we sometimes look for reasons to things that may not have significance in the overall scheme of things. Hope your foot gets better!
http://www.idzeeboo.com/blog
Take it easy and obey the doc's orders!
I wish you a speedy recovery. I hope no surgery will be needed. I say you should milk this for all it's worth.
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