God's Power Seen

I have enjoyed reading John’s Gospel this week and was reminded that while he does not refer to any of the parables of Jesus, he presents a rather complete account of seven of his miracles, five of which are not recorded elsewhere.  As I was reading about the man that was born blind (John Chapter 9) I was especially struck by the response of Jesus to his disciples when they asked him about the cause of the blindness, which they seemed to attribute to the sin of either himself or his parents.    Jesus responded “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.”  That little phrase caused me to pause there and spend considerable time thinking about what that could be saying to me.  How I dislike the difficult things that come into my life and I go to great lengths to either avoid them or rid my life of them.  I wonder how many times God allows “things” to come into my life to use them for HIS glory, but the real question is…did I respond to them so that HE was glorified?  I fear that the church (you and I) today has lost a great amount of influence and power in the world due to our lack of faith and trust in HIM coupled with our own selfish interests.    I have been thinking much about how I can better respond to those “challenges” coming my way for God’s glory.

Yesterday I spent a very full day at our election polls helping people and running the voting machines.  When I arrived there at 5:45 am there were already 25-30 people in line outside waiting for us to open the doors at 6:30 am.  Later I found that the first man in line had been waiting there since 4:30 am to be sure that he was first in line and off to work.  It was an extremely busy day keeping 14 voting machines going and when I finally got home after 10:00 pm, I was tired!  Being that I work in my home precinct, it is always a delight to be able to assist many of my neighbors. 

Tomorrow I am heading for Chicago where the family will be celebrating an early Thanksgiving together to avoid heavy travel on the holiday.  With Jeremy being a youth pastor there, it is difficult for him to get away on weekends, so we decided to join him, Julianna and Judah for the event.  Laura and Ella have been in Michigan visiting family, so Justin will travel with me, meeting up with them in Chicago.  The three of them will then travel back with me so it will be nice not having to make that long trip alone.  Pray for all of the family that will be covering many miles.  Hopefully the predicted weather on the coast will not come inland where we will be traveling.

Love to you all,

Chuck