Let me begin today with a humorous scene from a cartoon. While I do enjoy the newer Garfield program titled “The Garfield Show”, there is a special place in my heart for the Garfield series starring Lorenzo Music known as “Garfield and Friends”. It ran from the late 80’s into the 90’s. Memorable moments from that show still come to my mind even to this day. For example, as I was organizing my thoughts for today’s blog, I was reminded of this scene:
Jon Arbuckle, Garfield’s owner, decided to go
skydiving. When it came time to jump, Jon
wanted to chicken out, but the burly, unsympathetic instructor simply bellowed,
“That’s what they all say!” He proceeds
to pick Jon up, and throw him out of the plane – with Garfield on Jon’s back. I don’t need to find the scene online or
something to remember what happened after that; it vividly plays in my mind. As they plummet downward, Jon says, “Don’t
worry, Garfield, I’ll just pull the ripcord.”
He does, but the parachute doesn’t open.
“Don’t worry, Garfield,” Jon responds.
“I’ll pull the backup ripcord.”
“Nothing happened again,” Garfield announces in terror. “Don’t worry, Garfield. I’ll pull the backup, standby, reserve shoot,
ripcord.” Once again, no open parachute. So Garfield asks, “Can I start worrying now?”
I’ll get back to that scene later on (it would be cruel
for me to describe the scene without the conclusion), but first a question:
would you agree that there are times when the bottom drops out of your life,
and it seems as if you are totally out of control? No, maybe you weren’t thrown out of a plane
where your chute won’t open, but the unpredictability of life can make you feel
disoriented. I can relate. As it is July, I’m thinking about how, 6
years ago, my dad unexpectedly passed away.
That event changed the look of my life in so many ways. But there are more recent examples I could
give. I’m not going to take the time for
it now, but I could list two recent instances in my life where I was left
feeling dazed.
If anyone knows about life going in an unexpected place,
it’s Daniel and his three friends. Back in early June, I began talking about Daniel
1, I want to finally return to this
text today. The opening verses of Daniel
tell us that Nebuchadnezzar actually subdued Jerusalem. He dragged Daniel and company out of their
comfortable surroundings and began to teach them the Babylonian culture. Daniel 1:4 says that he desired for these
boys to “serve in the king’s palace”.
Fascinatingly, that’s what they did.
Verse 19 states it plainly: “therefore, they served before the king.” Understand that they never lost their faith
in the Lord; God used them mightily in Babylon (this is a point I want to highlight
in a future blog). Nevertheless, they
still didn’t scoff at the notion of serving a pagan king.
The big question is this: why did they choose to serve in
the palace of a godless king? Because they
learned an important lesson in life: they learned that the events in life are
not accidental, random, or haphazard.
Life may feel out of control, but in reality, the God of the universe is
in absolute control. As the song says, “He’s
got the whole world in His hands.” I
love this word from a got questions.org article:
Kevin
