I’m only sharing this because I’m sure a lot of you have had the same experience.
A good friend of mine had to resign his position as pastor of a local church because he’d had a stroke. I didn’t find out about it until there was no one at the church who knew how to get in touch with him. This was too bad: over the years, we’d done a lot of things together. Prayer. Basketball. And some acts of charity, when we could.
So he was in my prayers every day for I don’t know how long–at least a year. I prayed for God to heal him so he could return to the ministry.
Well, the Lord healed him. And yesterday I saw him “protesting” with his new friends from Only Black Lives Matter–a group devoted to fomenting racial hatred, abortion, homosexuality, and marxism. I was profoundly disappointed to see him there. But I was in my car and I couldn’t stop to talk. Besides, what would I say?
Sometimes when your back is to the wall, God gives you a second chance–just like he did for King Hezekiah (in Isaiah 38, and 2 Kings 20). And some people who get it don’t know what to do with it. I knew one man, miraculously spared from deadly pancreatic cancer, who took the opportunity to run out on his wife and whoop it up until the cancer found him again.
I’m glad the Lord spared my friend’s life and put him back on his feet. But what he’s done with his second chance–well, it makes me wonder why God bothers with us.
