I can’t but you can
I find myself saying this a lot more as I get older: ‘I just can’t do this anymore.’ Things that seemed easy for me in the past, such as gardening, are a challenge now; and that is okay. I am not complaining, or using excuses, just facing facts, and moving on to what I can do. What I cannot do does not seem as important anymore. I find myself instead being more grateful for what I can do, and more grateful for what is done for me. I realise through Jesus I am blessed in many, many ways each day.
Jesus has done for us all, what we could not do for ourselves. Oh, we often try to take charge of our own lives and create our own salvation. We try to pay for what has been given to us freely. We at times refuse to recognise the need for our salvation, and until we recognise this need, we are not going to move forward and accept the help that is being held out to us in Jesus. We take pride in our false strength and do not like the feeling of helplessness, the loss of control.
There is nothing wrong with being thankful and showing your appreciation. At the coffee shop in the hospital here in Klamath Falls Oregon, you can do what they call ‘paying forward.’ You can offer a gift of payment to thank someone else for their service and kindness to you, or to a loved one by buying them a coffee or two, or maybe a lunch. We can express our love and gratefulness to God for all that he has done for us and others, but we cannot take his place. We cannot do the things he does for us. I am so grateful for all that he does for us; which in my mind is just about everything; I would be or have nothing without him.
What love the Father, Son, and Spirit had in creating us. What love and patience in the raising of mankind. Many of us are still in that ‘terrible-two’ stage in our rearing. I understand by what I read that the very young do not have the brian development, the connections needed yet to discern the right and wrongs in their behaviour and to have a conscience for what they do. Do we throw temper tantrums? Are we still in that developmental stage in our lives? We are ever in need to learn and to grow. God is the greatest parent, the most loving and patient, but he will direct our steps till we are able to do so on our own. Thank you, God!
I am forever grateful for the things God has done for us all. I do not want to wallow in my weakness, because in my weakness Jesus enters in. God covers me with his strength, he is my hope and my future. There comes a time when our children grow and go out on their own. I do not want to be parted from God. Will there come a time when we will not need God? Oh, I do not think so, nor do I desire that day.
2 Corinthians 12:9-11 (NIV) says, ‘But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.’
Praise you, God!
Study by Anne Gillam
About the writer:
Anne Gillam is a retired Pastor in Grace Communion International, Klamath Falls, Oregon, USA.
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