Focus

 The last month has been one full of choices.  Not choices of one car or meal over another, but choices of where we will allow our mind to dwell.  In our ministry, just as in your life, there are choices of where to focus our mind.

We could focus on the results of a landmark election, whatever the result eventually is.  The stories of massive State-sponsored election fraud will forever cloud the minds of American people and particularly American Christians.  As a family, we could focus on the trailer issues that have made this last month particularly difficult.  Our power converter (see last month's entry) is fixed and everything in the trailer is running well, or was until yesterday.

Looking forward to arriving back home in time to be in our home church's mid-week prayer service, we headed south and east out of southwest Missouri.  Around 9 that morning, we stopped for fuel and I noticed that the trailer seemed to be sitting funny.  After sticking my head in and looking around, I discovered that the shackles holding the leaf springs were broken and the spring was sitting directly on the frame.  Eight hours later, everything was fixed and we were back on the road, although we missed the evening service at our church.  Not even the live stream would work.

Around 10 that night, we pulled up to the house expecting to simply move Sarah's car and back the trailer in.  The battery was completely dead and since COVID-19 has caused businesses to shut down earlier than usual, there was no way we could get a new one and move the car.  So, we went to the church and parked there.

We could choose to focus on these kinds of things and you, no doubt, have similar instances that you could relate.  The key to maintaining sanity is to focus on other things.  Things like the salvation of a man who had been the object of prayer for some time.

The man had noticed the daughter of a farmer in the church, and man and daughter had begun dating.  In May, the farmer was killed in an accident.  A couple of months after the accident, the man came to the farmer's widow and asked permission to marry her daughter.  The grieving widow replied that she liked him, but was bothered by the fact that he was unsaved.  He responded that he did not want to make a decision capriciously just to please someone else, but that he would come to church.  He was saved in one of the last services of the meeting.

We choose to focus on the many Christians helped and encouraged in our meetings, in addition to those who have come to Christ.

After a brief break for Thanksgiving, we are at it again in a couple more meetings.  We are trusting God for great things in the future.