RIGHT

Our word for today is "RIGHT."

If I should ask you to give the opposite of "right," you probably would reply, "wrong or left."  If you had to pick one those two, knowing I am a minister, you would probably assume I would be thinking "wrong."  I do not mean you would think me wrong, but you would think the word I had in mind was "wrong."  Well, you would would be wrong.  Because the right answer is wrong.  I do not mean that the right answer is wrong but the answer to my query is the word "wrong."  Are you with me so far?

A few days ago I was to take some deer meat, which was very dear to us, because we do like deer meet, to a butcher and have the dear, deer meat ground.  I was given directions to the butcher's shop.  I was to travel down a certain highway, and then turn on a certain gravel road on the right.  So far, so good, I did that.  The butcher was the 6th drive down the gravel road.  But I thought it was on the right side of the gravel road.  After I had gone farther than I felt I needed to go, I was certain I had overlooked the drive or just perhaps I had misunderstood the directions and the drive was really on the left.  If this last thought was right, then right was wrong, and left was right.

So I turned around and headed in the opposite direction.  In a very short distance I met a mail carrier in a delivery car.  I went against my masculine nature and shamefully stopped to ask directions.  What made it worse, it was a lady mail carrier.  By the way her car had a steering wheel on the left but she was driving on the right and was seated in the middle.  Go figure!  Anyway she informed me as to the correct place I was looking for.  Now as I began to travel again, it occurred to me, that going this direction the driveway was on the right, so right became right and left became wrong.  Are you still with me?

Let me begin to make sense out of this whole affair by injecting a Scripture, which only occurred to me after I got back home.

Galatians 6: ⁹ We must not become tired of doing good. We will receive our harvest of eternal life at the right time if we do not give up.(NCV)

You see, my experience of getting my directions a little wrong, was not so much a matter of right and wrong, as it was a matter of right or left.  In life there is the very important issue of being right or wrong.  And as believers we are always to choose right.  We should never give up on doing the right thing over the wrong thing even when the right thing requires some backtracking.  We will eventual reap the harvest, we will achieve our aim, if we do not give up.  But often in the living out of our faith, even when we choose the right over the wrong, we still get mixed up with the right or left.  These are the little things in life that  make it so interesting.  Now if we allow it, they can be the things that frustrate us to the point of giving in to the wrong.  I could have not gone at all, and allowed the meat to spoil, and that would have been wrong.  It would have been wasteful.  I could have given up on my quest to find the butcher, allowed the whole incident to ruin my day, and go home and make my wife miserable, and still fail to take care of the dear, deer meat.  In the final analysis I thought it was quite humorous.  Life will never be perfect.  The answer is do the right thing instead of the wrong thing and don't sweat the rights or lefts.

I saw a bumper sticker today that is a perfect ending for my rambling meditation:

GET RIGHT OR GET LEFT!

WORD FOR TODAY: SEE

 Fanny Crosby

This is my first blog since Christmas.  I enjoyed writing each day of Advent.  I will enjoy transcribing my meditations during the year of our Lord, 2013.  The  word for today is "SEE."

^{Isaiah 60:3} The Gentiles shall come to your light,
And kings to the brightness of your rising.

⁴ “Lift up your eyes all around, and see:
They all gather together, they come to you;
Your sons shall come from afar,
And your daughters shall be nursed at your side.
⁵ Then you shall see and become radiant,
And your heart shall swell with joy;
Because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you,
The wealth of the Gentiles shall come to you.(NKJV)

 

 Jeremiah 29:¹³ And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.

 

Someone has said, "No one can be so blind as those who have eyes and yet do not see."  My prayer is that in this year each of us as God's Children will see that which God wants us to see.  There is a difference between the way a true artist sees things about him and the way many of us often see things.  Most of us see the forest but the artist sees the trees that make up the forest.  We may see the tree, but the artist sees the leaves, the limbs, the branches etc.  We may see the green of the leaves but the artist sees the various shades of green even on the same leaf. 

In a spiritual way may God give us the eyes of an artist.  In seeing the evidence of God in creation may God give us the ability to see hope and not despair, joy and not just sorrow, beauty and not the ugly that mankind has made.  May we see God working behind the scenes to finalize His grand purpose.  May we see and experience His peace as we get another year older; if God allows us to live out 2013.

What a blessed year we would have if we could learn to emulate the character of the great hymn writer, Fanny Crosby.

Fanny Crosby (1820-1915) wrote more than 8,000 songs in her lifetime even though she was blinded at six weeks of age by a medical error. She was one of the most prolific hymn writers in history.

• Wrote 8,000 poems (song lyrics). She wrote so many that sometimes she did not recognize the words when she heard one of her own songs.
• 200 pen names. Publishers did not want the public to know she had written so many of their hymns. Daily productivity. Could write up to seven hymns in one day.
• No copyrights. Was paid only $1 or $2 for each poem and had no copyrights. The composers of the tunes usually kept all the rights.
• Living simply. In spite of the urging of friends and admirers, she chose to live among the poor.
• Simplifying the Gospel. She wrote for those who might not understand preaching and many were saved as a result.

The following is a poem written about Fanny Crosby:

Her heart can see, her heart can see!
Well may she sing so joyously!
For the King himself, in his tender grace,
Hath shown her the brightness of his face;
And who shall pine for a glow-worm light,
When the Sun goes forth in his radiant might?
She can read his law as a shining chart,
For his finger hath written it on her heart;
She can read his love, for on all her way
His hand is writing it every day.
“Bright cloud” indeed must that darkness be,
Where “Jesus only” the heart can see.

Christian Poetry by Frances R. Havergal
Public Domain

 

IF WE REALLY LOOK FOR GOD IN ALL THAT IS ABOUT US WE WILL SEE HIM!