One of the saddest charaters on the old Cheers TV show is a woman who had some heavy burdens dumped on her. So she goe around with a protective shield firmly in place.
I call this type... ??Ms. Attitude.?? On Cheers, that's ??Carla,?? the waitress.
Carla. Tough as nails on the outside... a real mess on the inside. Carla holds it all inside. She lashes out. But we see that hurt. A bad marriage. In Carla??s case, a couple of bad marriages. Bad luck. Hurt. Disappointment. Bad breaks. And so... she??s dug a hole, buried up all her hurts and... nobody will get to her.
Some of us reject God because we??re mad at God for not... restoring that relationship with a lost love... for not healing our father??s illness... for our not-so-good looks... for... a lot of things.
Folks... life isn??t fair. The God who made us gave us all free will. To choose him or reject him. He could have forced us to follow him. He could give us everything we want immediately when we wanted. And we??d follow wouldn??t we? Like robots.
God doesn??t want robots. He wants us to love him... freely. He isn??t a Genie in a Bottle. So... we have free choice. And with free choice comes...consequences. My mistakes... God calls them sins... affect not just me...but others... my family...my friends...the world.
So... bad things happen to good people. That??s the down side of free will. We can argue about it... but God set it up that way and... that??s the way he is.
But he??s just waiting for us to cry out to him.
There's a story I saw some time ago in the newspaper. It happened in a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. A dog owner who didn??t want a litter of nine puppies buried them alive.
The story said he took their mother, a mixed-breed Labrador named Sheba, and tied her to a tree around the other side of the house. Then he took the puppies and buried them in a paper sack in the back yard.
No one is sure how but the next day, Sheba worked her way loose from the chain. She found those puppies. No one knows how. They were in a two foot deep hole. They were so tiny that their whimperings were undetected by neighbors just over the backyard fence.
Sheba found them, dug them up, lovingly licked the dirt and sand out of their ears and mouths and nursed them. Neighbors witnessed the whole thing... called the cops and the dog owner was arrested. The six pups were saved by their mother... and now, through the Broward Co. Humane Society, are going to good homes.
Let me ask you... what kind of a home are you going to? I don??t mean tonight. I mean... when this life is over?
That driving, pursuing love of Sheba is like God??s. All you need to do is cry out to him. He??ll find you... he??ll take it from there... he??s listening for you... right.... now.
You can??t prove God??s existence in a laboratory. But the best evidence, I think, about God??s existence, is ourselves. You see... deep down now... really deep down... be honest now... deep down... WE KNOW!
This longing we have. That God-sized hole that Pascal wrote about. That hunger, that emptiness that... that nothing in life can fill until God bursts in... like Sheba the Labrador if you will... and makes everything... have meaning.
The Carlas in our life need to know that.
Author: Mike Wendland
Author Bio:
The author is a pastor at a large Bible-beieving church in the Midwest and the publisher of the Online Christian Shopper (www.onlinechristianshopper.com), a popular shopping site specializing in uniquely-designed Christian T-Shirts and jewelry items.
United Light Publishing
Robert Perala is an internationally acclaimed speaker and author of The Divine Blueprint: Roadmap for the New Millennium and The Divine Architect: The Art Of Living And Beyond.
First Light Video Publishing
The largest single source of instructional programming on the Media Arts and Mass Communication studies.
