It was nighttime in Southeast Nebraska. The stars were shining and all was good, except, off in the distance there was a thunderstorm brewing. I was headed to a sales call out in the country. Being young and foolish, I wasn’t too concerned about the storm and proceeded to the call. About an hour and a half later as I was getting ready to head home, it started to rain. The lightning was sharp and the thunder was making loud ka-booms. I got in my little Ford Courrier pickup and headed through the country to get back to the pavement and I thought I knew a shortcut. Yeah-HaHa!! The Rain is now coming down in buckets, the road is solid with lots of gravel on it. No, it wasn’t paved!! Then all of a sudden the gravel stopped and it is pure mud!!! I go probably about a hundred yards into this mud and finally get stopped. Boy, that was a wild ride trying to keep my truck out of the ditch. Now I’m stopped and it appears I’m stuck in the mud, 10:00 o’clock at night and no farm lights to be seen. Now what?? I can’t go forward–who knows how far this road is mud? Soooo I put it in reverse and eased out the clutch to see if it will even move. Wow, it’s actually moving. WHEW!! Now to keep it on the road in this awful slick mud. It is black dark outside and I can’t see where I’m going, so I hold the door open with one hand while I’m driving with the other hand, one foot on the clutch and the other foot on the foot pedal. The truck is spinning mud everywhere, it’s slipping and sliding as I inch my way back to solid road. It took about 30 seconds to get as far as I did in the mud and about an hour, inch by inch, to get out. Finally I’m back on solid ground and headed home, my door, inside the cab, and my leg all covered with mud. I get home about midnight and had never been so happy to see the house.
I tell you this story, because in life we can be doing fine, except we see a storm off yonder brewing up. It hits us and the road we were on turns to muck. We have to gather ourselves and figure out how to get back on solid road. We try to do it ourselves and nothing is working–we are stuck. Oh, hey, God might help, we think to ourselves. So we go to God in prayer and ask for help. Then we go to the scriptures and find passages of instruction. Inch by inch we back ourselves out of the muck to reach that solid ground that we so desire. It took a while, but with Gods help we made it. WHEW!!
SMILE God loves YOU!! Have a good day all.
