Thursday, December
13, 2018
With joy you will drink deeply from the fountain of salvation! In that wonderful day you will sing: “Thank the Lord! Praise his name! Tell the nations what he has done. Let them know how mighty he is! Isaiah 12:3-4(NLT)
You know what it means to be
blindsided; something happens that surprises you in such a way you can’t
believe you never saw it coming. It
could have been bad, like the knee on the football field that put me on an
operating table in 1963. It could be
good, like a gift you got, and it wasn’t even your birthday or Christmas. Stuff comes from the blind side…you never
suspect it, until it hits.
I get blindsided a lot.
There was that time when that new
girl showed up on the first day of school.
She walked right past me and I felt like one of those cartoon characters
whose jaw literally drops to the floor. That
was 53 years ago, and I still remember the blindside storm of feelings –
wow! – huh? – who? – uhm… Hey…anybody know who that is? That was 9 grandchildren and 4 great-grands
ago! She still turns my head!
In the bad-blindside department
about 10 years ago I was headed to church on a bright, sunny morning. Coming around that sharp curve in the road I
saw the stopped car a little too late to do anything but drive right into the
ditch. Distracted and blindsided!
Some blindsides are Christmas and
birthday all rolled into one moment; some are the kind where you want to whine: can-we-start-this-day-over?
Blindsides can be good or bad, but
there is something common to both varieties:
you will tell about them!
It’s human nature that we can’t help talking about those life-events
big-enough to qualify as blindsides.
When your life has been rearranged, you will rejoice, moan, celebrate,
ruminate, cogitate, think about, regret, and probably do what a hundred other descriptive
phrases might fit…but one thing is true…you will not keep it to yourself. Some things are just too good (or bad) to
stay silent!
And that brings me to the mailbox
yesterday afternoon. The mail carrier
made it to Brownworth house for the first time since the snow started
Saturday. And there was that envelope
from Treasury Services, a letter from the Bishop with a check for $268.80, on
behalf of Duke Endowment. So many years ago,
James B. Duke had a passionate drive to make sure pensioned preachers were taken
care of, that he endowed a Christmas gift to be shared with Methodist clergy
each year. I’ve been officially-retired
for 7 years, and each year I get blindsided by this event. A man I never met, set up a recurring
blindside each Advent season to lift my day, and lighten my load. He shared his fortune (literally) with people
he’d never met, nor would ever meet.
That stewardship mindset of James
Duke is a constant reminder for me of Isaiah’s fountain of salvation. Another man none of us has ever met in the
flesh set up the mother of all blindsides.
And he did it in the most unlikely way – no legal papers, trusts,
corporate divestments or dividend schemes; Jesus simply took our place on a
cross. What he left in our mailboxes was
a check far greater than even Mr. Duke could write; it was the PAID-IN-FULL
promise of forgiveness. His blood
signature opened the wealth of heaven’s welcome to my soul. And a simple prayer of repentance cashes that
check and cleans our hearts of every obstacle that stands between us and God.
Now, THAT’S a blindside
worth telling about!
For You Today
If you’ve been blindsided by the love gift
God sent through Jesus Christ, don’t keep that news to yourself.
