Closing the office, losing it all, honoring God

Word was sent out yesterday that my company will be closing the office through the end of the year to all but essential personnel. Fortunately, I am considered essential personnel. The thought behind the closure was to allow all employees to travel for Thanksgiving and Christmas without fear of having to announce that travel and countdown the corresponding quarantine that is required after such travel. So, everyone but a certain few of us are not allowed into the office other than for very specific reasons. As an outcome of that office closure, about half of the classes I was scheduled to teach between now and Christmas have been cancelled as well. That leaves me with six or seven classes to teach (one of which is tomorrow) in that same five-week timeframe, down from fourteen. I can live with that. In fact, if the internal class is cancelled for next week, I may take the week off – at least the three days prior to the Thanksgiving Holiday. Mama would like that.

Honduras was slammed by another hurricane this week. This, the second severe hurricane this month, made landfall on the coast of Nicaragua within a few miles of where the first hurricane made landfall This was a Category 5 hurricane when it made landfall. Again, the rainfall was massive, the flooding was destructive, and many more people lost everything in the storm. Cori was contacted by the young lady she counsels who told Cori that she and her family had spent the entire day and most of the night on the roof of their home as the water filled their neighborhood. They lost everything.

Although what is everything to them is very little compared to what each of us have in our homes, it is still a complete and overwhelming devastation which requires replacing as much of those possessions as possible. To that end, Mama, Victoria and I are going to send some money to Cori to give to the family to help them begin the process of starting over – almost from scratch. To understand the loss, think about the last time you moved, packed up the contents of the entire house, the storage building, the garage, etc., and imagine that none of those items made it to your new home. You had to replace everything. Now further imagine that you had to make all those purchases without any income, no money in an account at the bank and no ability to borrow the money to do so. That is where many families are right now in Nicaragua and Honduras. Cori and Nate are friends with some of those in that situation. The little we can do will help, but it will only meet a fraction of the need. Hopefully, those in the church who were not affected by the storm will also help but we do not want to miss the opportunity to do our part.

We had a missionary to the Philippines preach at church last night. He spoke about Solomon’s son Rehoboam who forsook the wise counsel of the advisors who stood with his father to follow the cruel advice of his friends. He pointed out that this was from the Lord. God had chosen a wicked king to rule over a wicked people. His judgement was coming on that generation. He postulated that perhaps God is doing the same in America today. He went on the talk about what God has anointed. We wo are saved are the anointed of God as His servants and children. Too long we have not recognized the Holiness of God and have wandered from the protection of His Grace to follow the ways of this world. We have made promises, vows, to God and have not honored those vows. We stand on the edge of God’s judgement. A judgement we certainly deserve. It was a wakeup call to us who are the “called according to His purpose”. A great message.

I have often thought that if I truly understood His holiness and deeply loved the Lord, who is my salvation, I would live, I would pray, I would order my life differently than I do. And in those moments of revelation, I do, but this is a busy life in a sin filled distracting world and maintaining that focus on God is certainly not a care associated with the world. Because of that, one of the things I look forward to in Heaven is having a perfect mind, a sinless mind. But we are not there yet, so the struggle continues and each day I try to listen carefully to the Spirit and focus my attention on the Lord. He is focused on me. He promised that he would, and I can trust those promises.

Mama and Victoria are off to get the dogs groomed and have their coats blown out. That should help with the shedding but we are all concerned about the dogs, which are inside dogs, getting into a dusty, dirty area of the yard they love to play in as soon as they are home from getting bathed and groomed. With that in mind, Victoria is buying a tarp to lay over the area in the hope of discouraging such attempt to dirty themselves as soon as possible. We cannot prevent the attempts to get themselves soiled. It is their nature. Therefore, I am not convinced laying out the tarp to hide the dirty area will work, but we will try.

There is nothing wrong with trying.