Standing on my Soap Box

Ever Feel Like a Modern Day Israelite?

  • Sheila Rempel, Author
  • Writer, Southeastern Manitoba

So earlier this month I wrote about being a modern day Job. If you are anything like me, you have CERTAINLY felt like that as the hits keep coming and you have no clue how to get past them. This leads you to become a modern day Israelite. Why? I am sure that somewhere in your history, you have seen God work. I know that I have, and we often forget. Why do we grumble and complain when life gets tough? Is it human nature?

The Israelites physically saw God part the Red Seas. They saw God provide numerous times. They saw God spare their children during the Passover.

Just like I have. I’ve seen God provide finances through “lean times”. I’ve seen God sell a house that was too expensive for my unemployed status, and he did it just in the nick of time – His time.

My Grandma Rempel used to tell me the story of my grandpa went out in the midst of a winter snow, and started a fire in cross roads in the country because God “told” him too. Not long after 5 hunters from Minnesota came to him at his fire. They were lost. Had my grandpa not listened to God’s prompting, those men would not have found their way to civilization. They stayed at my grandparents home for a few days until the storm blew over and they could get home.

My former drama team once did a “court case” as the sermon. We had God on trial. The statement that was made is that sometimes we see the “bugs eye view” of life instead of the “birds eye view”. Bugs eye view is seeing trials and hardships up close and very personal, whereas the bird’s eye view shows us how things are working out and that God does have things under control.

This all being said, here is a poem I read in one of Corrie Ten Booms books:

My life is but a weaving between my God and me; I cannot choose the colors, He works steadily.

Sometimes He weaves sorrow, and I in foolish pride, forget He sees the upper, and I the underside.

Not till the loom is silent, and the shuttles cease to fly, will God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why. The dark threads are as needful In the Weaver’s skillful hand, as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned.

Challenge for you – while it is easy to see the bug’s eye view, choose JOY knowing that God sees the bird’s eye view. He has you in the palm of his hand. Trust him.