A lot has changed since I wrote this on October 12, 2o13!
It's amazing how a life can turn around in one day. When he woke up this morning, University of Texas football coach Mack Brown was as good as fired from everything I heard on the radio. Some were even saying he might get his walking papers in the stadium parking lot in Dallas after today's annual Red River Shootout with the Oklahoma Sooners, a series dominated in recent years by their rivals to the north. You might want to hold off on those career obituaries for Coach Brown as his Longhorns routed the undefeated and heavily favored OU squad this afternoon by a 36-20 tally. The wolves may still be at the door for the second winningest coach in the history of UT football but they aren't howling quite so loud as the sun sets this evening in Austin.
We talk considerably in my classes how our lives can change instantly, for the good or for the bad and more likely for the unknown. Several weeks ago, my terrific, long time dentist was killed in Tennessee and also in Tennessee the same weekend, the husband of one of my former basketball players was almost killed, also in a motorcycle wreck. I know their days didn't begin with the dread of what was to come. We've seen public figures go from prominence to disgrace in one news cycle as one scandal or another comes to light. But sometimes, one can also go from anonymity to acclaim almost instantly in this media driven culture. Who can forget an unknown pilot named Chesley Sullenberger who became an overnight national hero when he safely landed his passenger on the Hudson River on January 16, 2009? Too bad they all don't have a happy ending like that!
But sometimes they do.......and even more amazingly than the Miracle On The Hudson. My students have been studying the soap opera which was Jacob's family in the last week and now we are focused on Joseph and how he ended up going from the favored son of a wealthy man to a slave in one day; how he ended up in the home of an Egyptian official where he was falsely accused of attempted rape; how he did a favor for a fellow prisoner who forgot that he owed him a real big one. And yet, by interpreting the dreams of Pharaoh enabled through the spirit of God, Joseph at the age of thirty, wakes up one morning in jail and goes to bed that night as the second most powerful man in the most powerful nation on earth. I cannot think of anything I've ever heard that remotely approaches that reversal of fortune. Imagine if you went to work at 6 AM on the breakfast shift at McDonald's and by suppertime you were the CEO of Microsoft! Or, try to conceive being a student manager on a small college football team when you get out of bed and that night, you're the new quarterback of the Denver Broncos, replacing Peyton Manning! But our God had a plan for His people and that plan included having Joseph in the position where he would reunite with his brothers, the ones who sold him into slavery. Hey, we know what the Scriptures say in Jeremiah 32:27, don't we?
"I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?"
The answer to the Father's inquiry, of course, is a resounding NO. There is no impossible with God, no difficulty factor nor any limits on the power which created the universe. When seen through that prism, my issues and struggles seem infinitely tiny. And who knows, I might wake up tomorrow as the Secretary of State.......and Mack Brown might win another national championship. We never predict what the day will hold only that it is held by the Creator.
Applicable quote of the day:
“Immediate are the acts of God, more swift than time or motion.” John Milton, Paradise Lost
God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
www.hawleybooks.com
E-mail me at steve@hawleybooks.com
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