In the Line of Duty

      A Facebook friend posted today about a local game warden who died in the line of duty--car accident. I sometimes struggle with the description "in the line of duty". All death is tragic, especially car accidents because there is no time to prepare. A loved one is suddenly gone. In the line of duty certainly applies to soldiers killed in war, and first responders killed on the job, but is the death of one of those individuals in a car accident going to or from work any different from other people heading to their jobs? When Trooper Mike Haynes died in a head on collision caused by the drunk driver he was pursuing, it was in the line of duty. The officer crushed by the car of the stranded motorist he was helping, died in the line of duty. Those committed to our safety and protection deserve special honor, but that doesn't necessarily merit the words in the line of duty.

     What about the young teacher killed by a drunk driver on her way to the school?  Or the mom bringing her kids to school who was permanently disabled when an oncoming car knocked a deer through her windshield? She was also a teacher there. What about the tow truck driver recently struck by a car on the side of the highway? He was on duty at the time. Truck drivers killed in crashes? Loggers struck by trees? There are many kinds of duties beyond those of first responders and many kinds of people have tragic accidents. If killed in the line of duty means everything, including car accidents that can happen to anyone at any time, then it really doesn't mean anything. And the words become a token, not a tribute.

Behind the Scenes

    In a previous post, I expressed how irritating I find the patience of God, ironic as that sounds. One of the other irritating things about God is that He is not always a good sport about letting us see what He is doing. A lot of His work is behind the scenes. It is said that coincidence is God working anonymously, and sometimes it is so anonymous it looks like God isn't doing anything at all. Times when there is no visible interest on our prayer investment. The truth is, the Bible omits many more things than it tells. A lot of that unreported backstory is what God is doing behind the scenes. We get a rare glimpse of these divine inner workings in the story of Job, although the readers got the explanation in the preface while Job had to wait for end credits. And there is another glimpse of unseen spiritual battle in Daniel 10, where the messenger sent to answer Daniel's prayer had to call Michael for back up to battle demonic forces trying to shoot the messenger. After times of hardship, we can sometimes look back and see God's purpose in it, but we rarely truly understand God's purpose in the midst of trial.

    So even though I am baffled by why my sister and her husband will not be spending the week of their 25th anniversary at the condo in Hawaii I reserved for them many months ago, I know God has a purpose in it. My sister's 2 mm breast cancer could be dealt with after the condo week. The trip could have been a welcome respite between diagnosis and treatment. But her husband's kidney stones, surgery, and (pardon the pun) rocky recovery was not conducive with long days of flying and relying on the medical care available in rural Kauai. No one wants a kidney stone as a souvenir of Hawaii. I do not blame them for cancelling. God's message could not have been more clear if He had provided stone tablets by the bed--with Braille subtitles. 

    Spending their 25th anniversary, on May 25th, in Hawaii, sounded perfect to me and there was a a lot of prayer on my part involved in making arrangements, especially when Kauai, because of Covid, closed to travel for months. So there was nothing wrong with my motive, prayer is never wasted, and yet, there is a lovely, two bedroom condo in Princeville that will go unused. I had hoped we could go ourselves, but while calling everyone we could think of, Reed realized he had made a prior commitment to one of those everyones during that time. There is an unseen purpose for this trip cancelling, and I have finally reached the point in my life where I can put on my spiritual big girl panties and be content not knowing the reason. Because I trust God even when He's irritating, and even when He's working behind the scenes.

Jacob at the Finish Line

     My BSF study has ended for the summer and this is the time when I look back at my personal take-aways. For one thing I had never considered why the Pentateuch was written when it was, during Israel's wilderness wanderings. Although I'm sure their ancestral stories had been passed down in other forms, Genesis explains how everything came to be, how the Jews came to be God's chosen people, God's promises to them, and why they were to displace the Canaanites when they arrived at the promised land. I know God's timing is perfect, but it seemed to me that it would have been handy for the fathers of the faith to have had the preface to their own lives written down ahead of time.

    But what made the biggest impact on me this time through Genesis was the life of Jacob. Jacob spent much of his long life drifting spiritually, but God would graciously step in, remind him of His promises, and point his prodigal to the proper path. Jacob did not have a Bible, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, or other believers to encourage him. He had only God, who is faithful to the faithless. So faithful, in fact, that the Lord chose to identify Himself as the God of Jacob.

    And it was especially encouraging to me that, despite everything, Jacob finished well. As the physical strength (moving stone well cover/wrestling Lord) that marked his life dwindled, his spiritual strength rekindled so much that his deathbed blessings to his sons also prophesied of the future Messiah. The Egyptians, who despised Hebrews too much to eat a meal with them, so respected Jacob that he was buried with the full honors and attendance of the Egyptian nobility. One BSF group member said she liked these lessons because Jacob's family was messy and, despite the best of intentions, so was hers. For me, Jacob's story was a reminder not to put a period where God has put a comma. Those spiritual drifters may yet finish well.