Saturday, June 15th, 2024
Spiritual Warfare
Hello my friends,
Lately it seems like I'm being pelted with spiritual sticks and stones. I've struggled more than usual this week to keep my chin up, to keep my eyes focused on Christ, and to even feel optimistic in the face of it all.
I say this with the hope that sharing my personal difficulties with both encourage those who are also struggling (is that a thing?) and encourage those who are in a good place to pray for me, or even say a few nice things to me.
I think it started on Tuesday.
My wife went to Saskatchewan to be with her mom and dad during and after her dad's knee replacement surgery. I'm home alone with our daughters, and fending for myself. Yes, I'm a big baby.
Then Tuesday night a raccoon got into the chicken run and killed two hens. I discovered their eviscerated bodies on the roof of the hen house (!) while closing up the coop for the night.
Then I found that one of the websites I've created (ServiceBuilder.net), wasn't working properly for some people in the United States. The service I hire to send text messages on ServiceBuilder's behalf was very slow to return messages, and not helpful in solving the problem.
Then I started thinking about an upcoming worship music festival at which I've been asked to play (Worship in the Wild). I started questioning whether or not it's even something I want to be part of. It became another point of worry and concern for me.
Then today another site I developed for the Canadian Biomaterials Society (biomaterials.ca) started receiving thousands of brute-force attacks, sending command after command to the server in an attempt to find a weakness in my coding.
Finally, as I worked with the video for this week (tomorrow's release), and considered some of the other songs I'm planning, I've started to wonder if I should even still be doing this. It seems like nobody really cares about my work, except maybe my wife and my mother. Should it matter to me anyway? How do I just do it all for an audience of One?
As I lay all of these cares out here, I feel a bit silly. It's not all that bad, really. So many people have it worse. I have a roof over my head, people who love me, something to occupy my time. I have salvation through Grace, which is the greatest of gifts!
How do I begin to let these things go and give them to God? How do I stop wallowing?
If anyone has an idea, I'd love to hear from you!