Holy Spirit of God, teach me how to accommodate traumatic turns…

Luke 9:18-20

                                       
Human life is tenuous at best!  That is why we need to know and follow  our Redeemer, Jesus the Christ, the Son of God who was the Son of Man, to find our way through this minefield of temptations and tests that we call ‘the world’. Although things might be ‘good’ one day, very quickly anyone’s life can be upset by a sudden death, a catastrophic natural disaster, even a slip in the bathroom, or any kind of overwhelming and unexpected event.  Seemingly ‘out of the blue’ Jesus notified his disciples that they must remember what he was telling them… that he would suffer and be put to death – but that he would rise again.  Of course they protested!  Of course they thought he was kidding!  Of course they dismissed it as some odd quirk of their Master.  However, when our Lord gives us any kind of warning such as this, it is ‘for real’ and is designed to help us accommodate things that might otherwise drown us in despair.  When the disciple recalled that Jesus knew about his own upcoming death, it took the ‘over’ out of ‘overwhelming’ and transformed the trauma of his crucifixion to become more an exercise in faith than a debilitating catastrophe.  Yes! It took them days to ‘accommodate’ his death by crucifixion. But as they accommodated the events they lived through and recalled his warning, they exercisedtheir faith – and went on to become the 12 Apostles ‘throwing the Fire of the Holy Spirit’ into the lives of many first century people, so that they, too, became followers of Jesus.  Will I learn from the Holy Spirit what I need to know in order to trust Jesus through all of the challenges ahead of me in my life?  Holy Spirit of God, teach me how to accommodate traumatic turns!
 
Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. (Isaiah 55:6)
 
A Christian, in terms of his or her deepest identity, is a saint, a spiritually born child of God, a divine masterpiece, a child of light, a citizen of heaven. Every man, every woman, is somebody because he, because she, is a child of God.
Martin Luther King, Jr. in You are a Child of God                 
 
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