Flat Tire

Flat tire. It’s been one of those weeks that everything seems to go wrong and it culminated with a flat tire. The pump in our well died last week, I had a strange load noise my car was making and both of those issues got fixed. But when I got home last night from getting my car fixed, I noticed that one of the tires on my truck was almost completely flat. I only use the truck on weekends to go to the landfill and such, but still, just another issue to deal with after a week full of issues.

Sometimes life gets us down and feeling “deflated” (pun intended), and we feel like we can’t get ahead and make our way past what’s weighing us down. We can get in a funk and let each new issue pull us further and further into a feeling of hopelessness. We feel that maybe God is punishing us for some reason we do not yet know about. Or we start looking back at our recent actions to see if we can figure out what we’ve done wrong that God can be punishing us for.

Truth is, God’s probably not punishing us for anything, we just live in a fallen world where bad things happen. Well pumps die, cars make noises and tires go flat, not because we did anything wrong, it just happens. But why do we automatically want to respond like we are being punished?  Do we see God as this Heavenly Judge just waiting for us to mess up so He can punish us?  That is not the God of the Bible. His grace is always abounding for His children. Now don’t get me wrong, He will correct His children when they need it, but that’s not His ultimate goal.

“And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” - 2 Corinthians 9:8. The grace of God allows us to be able to look at the hard times and battles in our lives and know that we are not being punished for things but that we live in a fallen world where bad things happen to everyone. “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” - Matthew 5:45.

When bad things come, and they will, sometimes many at one time, know that God loves you and He wants what’s beat for you. Let us not look at every obstacle as punishment from God. Let us look at it as a chance to run to Him and ask Him for grace to get through it.

Have a great day and God bless.