Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.
Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.”
When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
“You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the other brothers and sisters about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.
(Acts 12:6-17)
In my last post, I discussed some things that I had learned from observing my puppies during Molly's recovery from her spay surgery. A week later, Buddy became very sick with what turned out to be the Parvovirus. In between these two major events, the little
1) Sometimes our prison is only in our mind. During Molly's recovery, I decided that it would only be fair to put Buddy in the kennel once in awhile so Molly could move about without him trying to roughhouse with her. The funny thing is, I would close the kennel door and not latch it, and Buddy wouldn't know the difference. Had he pushed against the door, it would have swung open and he would have been free. But in his mind, that's not how the kennel works, and so he never attempted to push the door open. Instead, he simply resigned himself to the fact that he was stuck until such time that I released him.
The story from Acts above tells about Peter when King Herod had him imprisoned with the intent to execute him. The angel came to free Peter from his cell, but Peter thought it was just a vision. It doesn't specifically say that Peter was praying for his release, but I think it's a safe assumption that he was hoping for some miraculous way out of his situation. Furthermore, the believers who had gathered to pray for Peter refused to believe that he was at the door until he showed himself to them.
How often do we think that we are stuck or trapped in a situation with no way out? We pray for a miracle, but in reality, the door is unlocked and all we have to do is walk through it. We become so focused on our problem that we can't even see the path to freedom that God is laying out in front of us. I fear that too many of us are wasting away in a prison of our own making. Jesus tells us that He came to set us free from bondage (John 8:31-36). So if you claim to be a Christian, God's desire is for you to be free. You just have to claim that and walk in His promises.
On a side note, if you're praying for God to do something, let Him surprise you by doing it in a way that you don't expect. Just because the answer doesn't come the way you think it should doesn't mean it's not from God.
2) Grace is more important than stuff. One day, while I was letting the kids run around a little to burn off some energy, I was biding my time on facebook (shocking, I know). Suddenly, they came flying through the pet door and made a beeline straight under the table where I had set up my laptop. Before I knew what was happening, one of them managed to catch the power cord as he/she whizzed by, and the laptop became airborne. I was unable to catch it before it crashed to the hard floor. Needless to say, the laptop immediately shut down. Everything I did to try to restart it failed. My hard drive was toast. I've had this laptop for less than a year, and replacing it really wasn't in my budget. In addition, my last backup was from the middle of August.
Naturally, my immediate reaction was anger. Those stupid dogs! Do they have any idea what they just did? How could they be so careless? What were they thinking? And then I looked at their shocked faces (they knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Daddy was not very happy). Their cute little shocked faces. And I remembered that these are dogs, not people. They have no idea what a laptop is (or why Daddy spends so much time playing with it instead of them). They certainly didn't mean to trip over the power cord that I had stretched across their path. They simply did what energetic puppies do - run until they drop from exhaustion. And my anger melted into grace, and I forgave them (because they felt so guilty - not). I still was not too happy about the laptop, but the laptop is just stuff. These two little critters staring at me, wondering what all the fuss is about, are my children (well, as close to children that I will probably ever have). Laptops and "stuff" can be replaced. People (and pets) cannot be replaced.
When we feel we've been wronged by someone, we need to remember that a) they probably did not do it intentionally - most people are not that malicious; and b) they're just doing what people do - messing up and making mistakes. In the Lord's Prayer, we are taught to forgive others the way that we want to be forgiven. Jesus told the crowd that the first person without any sin in his life was permitted to start casting stones at the adulterous woman (no one took Him up on His offer). As Christians, we are meant to be the embodiment of God's grace on this earth. Stuff comes and goes, but the relationships in our lives are gifts from God, and we need to treasure them more than our stuff.
3) God is amazing. Okay, that's probably not too profound, but I want to give testimony to His goodness and mercy. A few days after the laptop incident, Buddy became quite ill. He was throwing up and refused to eat. Now, puppies are notorious for eating anything that isn't nailed down, so I figured he probably ingested a bad caterpillar or something (they both love bugs - enough said). I waited a day to see if this would resolve itself, but it didn't. So I took him to the vet. They couldn't identify anything physically wrong - no blockages, etc. They gave him some fluids and medicine and sent him home, with the instructions to bring him back the following day if he still wasn't eating. The next day was no different, and now he was starting to get listless and had lost a lot of his energy. I could tell that he was not feeling well. I took him back to the vet, who did a Parvovirus screening. The results came back positive. Parvo is a very serious disease that eats away at the lining of the dog's stomach and intestines. Untreated, it can usually prove fatal. Buddy had been vaccinated in June, but apparently he never developed the necessary antibodies in his immune system to fight off the virus when he came in contact with it.
We did more fluids and more medicines, and they sent him home again. The following day, he was no better, and I was very concerned that I might lose my little Buddy. I prayed, and asked everyone I knew to pray. And then the vet's office called. They had contacted the drug company that makes the vaccine, and since the company guarantees their product, they agreed to pay all of Buddy's medical bills up to $5,000. Because of this, the vet wanted to put Buddy in the hospital immediately so he could have aggressive round-the-clock treatment. I gladly consented, especially since I knew that the expense would be covered and I wasn't going to have to sell a kidney or something to pay for it. Buddy went in the hospital Thursday afternoon, and by Friday evening, he was well enough to come home to finish his treatment regimen.
Today, Buddy and Molly are playing as if it was a month ago, my little happy family is whole again, and I am incredibly grateful. Of all the possible solutions to this very scary situation, I would have never imagined that the drug company would pick up the tab to ensure Buddy's recovery. I had exhausted my cash reserves between Molly's surgery and the first two office visits (pets are as expensive as children sometimes) and wasn't sure how I could afford to keep paying for these daily treatments, let alone hospitalization. Only God could have orchestrated this outcome.
Bringing it full circle back to our original story of Peter, never ever underestimate God's ability to do something totally unexpected. If for no other reason, He does it just to make sure we know it's His doing and not ours.
Have a blessed week!
Pastor David
