On an Ordinary Day

It was a beautiful late-summer, early-fall morning. My husband and I were taking our granddaughters, Corrin, 4, and Rachel, 2, whom we were baby-sitting, for a walk. We loved to go down the hill to a spillway where the water ran over the low bridge just enough to cool little feet and wriggling toes.

After our tots tired of tossing pebbles over the bridge barrier and sighting fish stirring the water below, we nudged them on for the long walk up the steep hill. But first, they had to catch tadpoles in the shallow puddles beside the road and pick scraggly bunches of sunflowers bobbing in the breeze. Rachel got tired first, so we made a pack-saddle of our arms and carried her up the hill while big sister scrambled on ahead.

How we loved this little bit of country paradise! We had begun pastoring a small church and needed a place nearby, after having driven for a few months from our former home 40 miles away. I had despaired of finding a rental, though I searched the newspaper daily. Then one day I happened to read something from a book by Pat Robertson. He told of how they were in search of a home, when the Lord spoke to him, saying, "Until you are thankful for the home you have, you will not find a better one." Good things happened when he commenced to do that, ending up with a ranch, horses, and a home they love.

I took his words to heart and did the same thing. The next time I looked at the classifieds, I read, "For Rent: Cozy cottage on 30 rolling acres, pond, pecan trees, on 15-acre lake." We took it! And now glad to go in and collapse on sofas! The television was on, since our son was with us while taking a break from college.

I stared at the screen, thinking it was some kind of accident, when I saw smoke billowing from a tall building and heard puzzled concern in the voice of the television host. It was 9/11, today's date!

We fell to our knees as the horror sank in, and the terrifying events that followed that day kept us praying! The security of our idyllic little world was shaken! And now, 16 years later, we are shaken by disasters of what the news commentators describe as "of biblical proportions"!

The scriptures tell us, "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven;

Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.

And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken remain." Hebrews 12:25-27.

The next verse comforts and admonishes us, "Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with godly fear." Certainly applicable for today!