On my phone, I have a Scrabble app called Classic Words. I’ve had it for a while, and I like playing it. I’ve played 1,818 games, all against the droid, and I’ve won every one of those 1,818 games. I’ve never lost. I know that will probably sound like I’m bragging, and that’s not my intention. Hear me out.
Each play gives me seven letters to work with. I don’t get to pick those letters. I just have to figure out what to do with them. How do I make a word? How can I make as many points as possible with that word?
Hang in there. I’m going somewhere with this.
On Sunday, 12/4/22, Pastor Chris began a two-week Christmas series. You can check out week one here. He explored the idea that “everything happens for a reason.”
If everything happens for a reason, sometimes it must be for a reason I don’t understand. Why does one of our dear friends wrestle with a very serious cancer? I don’t know. I wish it wasn’t happening, but it is, and I don’t know why.
I like what Pastor Chris said, however. God can take bad things and redeem them for good.
The pieces of our lives are given to God just like seven random letters are given to me when I play the Scrabble app on my phone.
And God never loses.
He knows what to do with the broken pieces of our lives.
Like you, I will stand with our friends who are suffering. I will pray for healing, for help, for deliverance, for peace, for every kind of hope I can imagine.
And God will take our prayers, and this sickness, and all the other mangled pieces of our lives, and find a way to win.
Always.
Dwight
