February 3, 2008

• Three cities in one week is tiring, from Tokyo to Fukuoka to Kagoshima and back to Fukuoka.  MIL had an endoscopic Dr. appointment to have her stomach checked to be sure that she is healing properly after her surgery in November.  They found that the entrance to her stomach had healed a bit narrowly and that there was potential danger of things getting blocked, so while they were "down there" they enlarged the base of her esophagus with a balloon and they kept her in the hospital overnight to be sure there was no bleeding.  There was not, and she was out the next day.  Her appetite is much better recently, and she has even gained back a pound or two. 

  II Timothy 1:12  "... I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day."

  I have been thinking about suitcases a bit recently.  I may have written about this illustration from Ravi Zacharias before.  Suppose you are in an airport with your suitcase and find that it has gone missing.  You go to the airline counter and report your loss.  You tell the person at the counter that you left your suitcase by your chair and went to get a cup of coffee and when you returned your suitcase was gone.  You are going to be told that you are out of luck and in all probability will never see your bag again.  Let's imagine a different scenario.  You check your bag in at your airline's point of departure.  You arrive but your bag does not.  You go to the counter and show the person your baggage claim ticket, and are assured that your missing bag will be found and delivered to you at your hotel.

  Just as the airline company is responsible to take care of and safely deliver baggage that we entrust to it, God is faithful to take care of the things that we have prayerfully entrusted to His care, and we need not fret over them.   If we refuse to entrust things to him, then we are on our own as far as those things are concerned, and have more than ample cause to worry about them.

  I would like to look at this from another angle if I may.  How often have we been asked at the airport if we have packed out our own bags or if our bags have always been in our possession?  If we go around in life picking up any "suitcase" that we find on the street, even if it appears to be an expensive designer Louis Vuitton bag on the outside, who knows what we will find on the inside?  The bag could contain poison, filth, drugs, or a bomb!  We know that if a suitcase has been handed over to us from God, that there will be nothing harmful inside, and that the each and every one of the contents will be useful towards God's goal of conforming us to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.

  I remember another suitcase illustration given by Corrie ten Boom.  When she was a child, she and her father were on a train.  She asked her father a question that he felt was not appropriate to answer at this time in Corrie's life, and the lack of answer was explained this way.  Corrie's father asked her to lift his heavy suitcase, and of course she could not.  He then told her that the answer to her question was like to suitcase, too heavy for her to carry yet.  Someday she would be able to deal with the answer, but not now.  Sometimes I don't understand the contents of my suitcases or they seem to heavy for me to carry.  But I know the One who has packed them for me with everything that I need, not one item more or less, and that if they are too heavy that He is the One who carries them for me.

  • 21:40
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