Good Friday came and went, and so did I—or so I felt.\u00a0 I could write for weeks now, just on everything this weekend that postponed my writing.<\/p>\n
I would say a loaded life has more meaning than a placid one.\u00a0 Yet we all seem to desire and strive for smooth sailing.<\/p>\n
Good Friday, Saturday, and Easter Sunday.<\/p>\n
What an ordeal it was for Jesus.<\/p>\n
What a deal it is for us.<\/p>\n
When you start thinking of God working things together for good, that aren’t good, you can go on and on with examples and lessons, including stuff that still doesn’t make sense.<\/p>\n
If we love God, we are eligible for promises that make all the difference in the challenges, trials, and tragedies of this life.<\/p>\n
But the promise that I’m thinking of goes even farther concerning eligibility—<\/p>\n
If we love God, and are called . . .<\/p>\n
That’s telling me that we are not in charge of our destiny, or responsible for making all the details of life fit together.\u00a0 “Called” means taken out of the mainstream of humanity without permanent meaning, to something higher.<\/p>\n
Then there is more to the promise—<\/p>\n
If we love God, and are called according to His purpose.<\/p>\n
You see, when we try to force meaning into our lives by ourselves, we are never totally successful.\u00a0 We achieve some goals, but some questions remain—about good and bad, about God and us, about life and death, about “then what?”<\/p>\n
Jesus went through everything we do, and more—including pain and injustice and the ultimate questions “Why?” and “If . . .”<\/p>\n
He knew the end from the beginning, but that didn’t make it easy.<\/p>\n
So why did He do it?\u00a0 Why did God arrange it?<\/p>\n
So we don’t have to.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Life [all of it] is worth the living,<\/p>\n
Just because He lives.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“And we know that all things work together for good, to them that love God, who are called according to His purpose.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Good Friday came and went, and so did I—or so I felt.\u00a0 I could write for weeks now, just on everything this weekend that postponed my writing. I would say a loaded life has more meaning than a placid one.\u00a0 Yet we all seem to desire and strive for smooth sailing. Good Friday, Saturday, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educational","category-faith_based","category-inspire_lifter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1903"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1904,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1903\/revisions\/1904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}