In ministry there are various types of risks. One I remember is back at my first church. Much of the old church building had a flat roof, so the senior pastor and I would every Spring go up on the roof and put more tar down in all the corners and over the cracks, otherwise it would leak.   One year, the sharply sloped roof over where my office was, started to leak.  My office was up on the second floor, quite some distance above ground. The senior pastor decided we better put some tar on the corner seams up there, so we got out an extension ladder to first get up on the flat roof, then we pulled the ladder up and went over to where my office was and we put the ladder there. It was his idea that I go up first and do the sloping down side first, so I had to climb up the ladder, then up the sloped roof, then I had to lay down on my stomach, grab the bucket of tar and brush, and go up over the roof peak and lay headfirst on the sharp slope downward, because it was way too steep to stand on and he, a 70 year old man, would hold my ankles so I wouldn’t slide off headfirst. So, I did that, got the tar on while he held my ankles and I survived. Not really the best way to do things, but back then, one would do things like that.  Was it kind of risky, sure; but it worked.   

 

  It is true what Forrest Gump’s mother told him, that ‘life is like a box of chocolates’ in that we never know what we will get. But God knows.   So, because God cannot take risks, since He knows exactly how it will turn out, therefore we can take risks, even though we don’t know how things will turn out.   We pray, we trust God, we go.

 

    Life is also a lot like a hockey game. Ever notice how long a hockey player stays on the ice when he gets knocked down?  Not long at all.   He doesn’t lay on the ice saying: ‘oh, woe is me, they knocked me down, they don’t like me, boo hoo.’    No!  He immediately pops right back up and gets back in the game.

 

       So too with us, if you fall, and you will at times; don’t lie there and whine and complain, get back up and get going again.  When you fall, don’t fall like an egg and go ‘splat’; fall like a golf ball and bounce back up.

 

    We’re not to live in fear.  Too many live their whole lives in fear and then soon they die and they have regrets.    Life is like a coin.   You can choose how to spend it but you only get to spend it once.   And as we saw Solomon teaching us in Ecclesiastes, you will have to give an accounting as to how you spent it!

 

     Life is not secure anyway. This is a dangerous, broken world, so unless you want to live your life in some kind of bunker; well, even there you’re not safe.

      Safety is not a bunker or a place or a medicine; safety is being in the center of God’s will for you!

This is my last thoughts from the trail blog.  I will be retiring after 47 years of ministry this Sunday, March 30, 2025.  I am very grateful that the Lord was so good to me over all these years and was always faithful to me.  As we start a new chapter in life, may you keep looking up, to see God seated on the throne and may He give you His supernatural peace.  Remember, for the Christian, the best is always yet ahead!