Every once in a while I buy a lottery ticket. Not weekly and honestly, not ever with any hope of winning. I once won $19.38 from the New York powerball. I should probably call it good at that and just quit. I have this crazy idea though. I never check the numbers the day after they draw them. Lots of times I don't check the numbers for weeks. Why? well, because I think that would be an incredible illustration. Imagine standing in front of a group of people and saying "I was a multi-millionaire and didn't know it... I had in my pocket the $89 million ticket and still ate at McDonald's..." Ok, so I would NEVER eat at McDonald's but you get the idea. Vast resources at my disposal and I didn't realize it.
What an illustration for our lives.
Paul says in Romans that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ...
-except that business trip that took us a little too far from home,
-or the doctor who just said some long sentence with the word cancer in the middle,
-or our teenage daughter who is drifting away from us and is starting to show,
-or the stack of bills that we just can't pay...
No, he actually says nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing. Rest on that for a minute. We have unlimited resources at our disposal every day and we tend to live as though we're paupers. We have the winning ticket in our pocket...
