Seeing God's Glory at Home

To quote our favorite girl in a blue dress and red heels, "there's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home."

Home is especially wonderful after a long hard week. I told one a my friends this past week that home is the best medicine. Its the place you can go to re-coup, get yourself together, and find healing. This past week that was exactly what I needed. By Friday afternoon I was so ready to go home, wild horses couldn't stop me. But a flat tire definitely did.

That's right, I was 30 minutes away from home and got the worst flat tire that has ever been seen. Turns out I had run over a nail about two inches long and had probably been running on a flat for a while. Not only that, but I didn't have a spare tire with me, even if I did, I wouldn't know how to change it. So I called on my wonderful grandfather who came to get me and patched the hole (as best he could) and filled up my tire with air. We were on the road home not for 10 minutes and the tire went flat again; the patch hadn't worked. This happened several times on the way home and every time I sat in the truck while my grandad filled it up once more and I tried to think of what God was trying to teach me through all of this. I got nothing.

You heard me, God wasn't really speaking anything profound to me through this whole flat tire deal. But then I began to think of the story in the gospel of John about a blind man who received his sight. The story is found in chapter nine:

"As he (Jesus) went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind? Neither this man nor his parents sinned but this is done that the Glory of God may be revealed in his life."

Basically his disciples were asking him, "Why did this happen?" And Jesus' answer was very simple, "For my Glory." Sometimes things happen in our lives that we really don't understand. I've always been under the impression that everything happens for a reason, but the reason is not always complex or profound. Sometimes the only reason things happen to us is simply so that God may receive the glory.

My mind goes back to the story of Ruth and Naomi in the old testament. Naomi was a faithful, God-fearing woman. She loved the Lord and was in his will, then, out of nowhere, BOOM! Her husband dies and her two sons die, and one of her daughters-in-law leave her. She lost everything. What could God possibly have been trying to teach her?

The answer: Nothing. God wasn't trying to teach her anything. He was simply using her situation to bring him glory. The rest of the story goes a little like this: Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth move back to Moab and Ruth meets a handsome man named Boaz. They get married and have a son named Obed, who has a son named Jesse. And guess what? Jesse has a son named David, who becomes king and out of whose lineage comes Jesus. Now what better way to glorify God than to be his great great great great great great great great great great great (you get the picture) great grandma?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that God isn't always trying to teach us a lesson, sometimes he just uses our situation to show us his glory.