He had been a football player in college and, by the looks of him, he must have been a cornerback. She was a seventh-grade girl maybe weighing in at a little over a hundred pounds. Leaning in towards her, with hands on both sides of the girl’s desk, this red-faced teacher was yelling directions and insinuations as spit flew. I thought he would split open his sports-jacket. She was staring straight ahead with a look of total unconcern and lack of fear. I don’t know what she did to set him off, but whatever it was, I wouldn’t be caught doing it. One of my memories is his throwing a boy up against a cement wall.
She was my cousin, and at that moment I believed she was the bravest girl in the world. Years later, I asked her how she could show such indifference in the face of such brutal threats. She related to me that she had the ability to just shut down till the storm passed. That might be genetic, but I sure didn’t get that gene.
Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that just don’t seem to have an escape-hatch attached to it.
Paul the Apostle found himself in such a place and this is what he had to say:
2 Corinthians 4:7-11
But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
How do you handle those situations?
Think about it.
Gary