FIRE & FLOOD INSURANCE

Our street got a fire hydrant transplant a few weeks ago. I suppose it’s routine maintenance—you don’t want your house to have a fire and a neighborhood hydrant that only sputters.  The night before, city workers went door-to-door explaining the water main would be cut off, so fill the tub for flushing water and set aside enough drinking and cooking water for the day. The next morning, huge trucks and excavation machines rumbled down the street. If I’d been caring for my grandboys that day, they would have been easily entertained by the excavation parade!

The inconvenience took me back to the few times I’ve been in another country and pure, available water isn’t a given. Certainly that was true thousands of years ago when Isaiah lived in the Holy Land. Though considered to have an arid climate, the desert areas of the Holy Land at times experience cloudbursts that fill and flood creek beds or wadis, leading to dangerous flooding. That probably was in the back of Isaiah’s mind when he wrote of spiritual floods:

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. (Isaiah 43:2)

Reading that reminds me of the desperate scenes reported in news media of victims of hurricanes, tidal waves, and floods. But that is not the focus on this passage. It’s when life’s problems overwhelm us, we’re to remember that God will be with us.

There are a lot of things about adversity that I don’t understand. But because of my faith in God’s promise to be with me in and through it, I persevere and hope.

Those who don’t, are prone to blame. Like a runaway flash flood, they harm anyone. I was reminded of that recently in reading Safe People by Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend. The book was first published in 1995 (Zondervan), but its principles still ring true. In a chapter about traits of “unsafe” people, the authors acknowledge that we all at some time or another will experience problems that aren’t our fault. If we’re injured, we need to seek medical help. If we are bereaved, we need to grieve. If the person who wounds us emotionally or physically doesn’t care, and never changes their behavior, we need to work through positional forgiveness.

It’s all hard work, and “unsafe people” don’t want to do all that. “They stay angry, stuck and bitter, sometimes for life,” the authors wrote (p. 37). “When they feel upset, they see others as the cause, and others as the ones who have to do all the changing. When they are abused, they hold on to it with a vengeance and spew hatred for the rest of their lives. When they are hurt, they wear it like a badge. And worst of all, when they are wrong, they blame it on others.”

How much better the faith walk that allows God to change our character, from blamers to blessers. From those who complain about the floods of life, to those who grab onto the life ring of hope. Later in the same chapter, Isaiah wrote:

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!  (vv. 18-19)

Far wiser than my town’s street department, God knows when I need some spiritual “maintenance.”  When I allow Him to dig out the corroded parts of my personality, a better life is ahead.