Read I John 4:13-16
These days of social distancing have increased self-reliance. If you are single, well, really, is there anyone else on whom you can depend in your day to day solitary existence? If you are a couple (or half of one!), your reliance on one another for conversation and entertainment has grown. If you have children, you may have noticed that siblings have begun to rely on one another for friendship and, in some instances, may have become best friends.
As the days of isolation creep on, frustration mounts. Some of you may be feeling at your wits’ end. All of us have probably been there at time one time or another in our lives. We have asked ourselves, “Whom can I trust? On whom can I rely?”
I felt that way on the road to Luanshya one bright, sunny day in 1987. I had set out on the road with four of my five children in the vehicle. My twelve-year-old daughter and her baby sister were in the cab of the pick-up with me, and my eight-year-old and my four-year-old were bumping along under the canopied bed of the truck. The road seemed quiet with no other vehicles in sight until, way up ahead, I saw a mob of people standing in the middle of the road. “Had a bus broken down?” I wondered.
Suddenly, as I peered toward the crowd, a larger-than-a-baseball sized rock came hurtling toward me. I ducked my head, fearing the rock would crash through the windscreen and smash my face. It did, indeed, crash through the windscreen and hit solidly in the middle of my bowed head. Blood poured from the wound. Everything started to turn black.
By the grace of God, I managed to bring the vehicle to a stop before blacking out. The screams of my daughter brought me back to reality, the light returned, and I found us in the middle of a mob upset because the president had removed the subsidy on maize meal, the staple food of the Zambian people. What to do? What to do? Only God could help.
As a police Landrover approached on the opposite side of the dual highway, I cried out for help. When they stopped alongside me, I noticed the Landrover was loaded with goods looted (I learned later) from shops in Ndola, the city in which I lived. Not only were there mobs on the highway, there were riots in the city. What to do? There was nowhere to turn.
The police offered to lead me back, past the mobs, to Ndola on a back road through a very heavily forested forestry plantation. No way! I was in enough trouble already. Eventually, God intervened, and the police escorted me safely home via the highway.
In those moments of distress, there was absolutely no one on whom I could rely except God. There was nothing I could do. There was no one there to help. The whole situation was out of my control. God stopped the car. He brought me back from the dark. He protected me from evil men. He returned my children and me safely to our home.
Why would He do that? Only because He loves me so very much. Not only does He love ME that much, He loves YOU that much as well. He demonstrated that great love for both you and me when He gave Jesus, His Son, to die for us.
God IS love. We cannot fathom how boundless is His love nor understand how He could love us so much; but He did, and He still does. He sees us in our frustrations, He is beside us in our troubles, and He never, ever leaves us, no matter in what situation we find ourselves. When everything is out of sync, we can still rely on God’s love for us.
How we praise You and thank You for Your great love, O God. We do not comprehend it nor can we explain it in words that would make sense, but we know Your love is real. Thank You that we can rely on You who will never fail us.
In the Name of Jesus, Amen!