"Assurance......."

When one examines life from the perspective of anything making sense, reality tends to leave the brain swimming in an abyss, the world, as we know it, although stamped with a design so obvious there can be no doubt of a creator having initiated its genesis, yet existing seemingly with no rhyme or reason attached to its unfolding, everything within it able to know sudden extermination. Soldiers storm the beaches of Normandy only to be slaughtered en masse, here and there a single survivor of the bloodbath. A tidal wave breaks over Japan’s coastline; an earthquake shakes Haiti; a tornado snakes its way across Oklahoma; and this day, this hour, this minute was the wrong time to take the expressway on your way to the mall. Human resolve, I suppose, somehow accounts for our ability to ignore the facts, trust in the odds, and hope for the best, each of us grasping for our own anchor-line in an attempt to know some sort of security as we go. Our Bible class, last night, with Acts, Chapter Three for a backdrop, discussed the gift of healing. The “mystery” of healing might well be a better way to frame it, none of us having any good answer as to why some obtain it and others do not. We examined “faith” and whether the name of Jesus held authority merely in its enunciation, our ninety minutes of fellowship accomplished without any of us going to war. It amazes me how believers tend to eliminate the Holy Ghost or at least reduce the indwelling to an insignificant part of the equation, especially when the bunch is, for the most part, Pentecostal. To be fair, though, language is a poor way to communicate; and I need no more than to point out our struggle between male and female, the gender barrier, in many ways, a mental one. Such thoughts, however, all bring me to some monologue extended to God on my way out to church earlier, the words spoken in response to another failure on my part to hear His voice in a way so as to confirm the connection I claim. Having known, on occasion, that which was sought, the hunger to realize it again is an ever-present desire. The silence now was met with disappointment; but, in my “belly”, somewhere down in the depths of my soul, the waters began to stir, a tear coming to my eye and a “touch” resting upon me as I prayed. If, between here and eternity, this old man never knows again the convincing of His Word in my ear, in my spirit, to know that inner “hook-up” in such manner is a privilege of which I’m unworthy. It meets me in my questions, goes with me in the next step. Let tomorrow hold what may……