And It Came to Pass
A woman was sitting on her couch when a snake slithered past. The woman, deathly afraid of snakes, dashed to the bathroom to get her husband from the shower. Wrapping himself in a towel, he grabbed a broom handle and tried to get the snake out from under the couch.
As the husband was bent over, the family dog came in and touched his cold nose to the back side of the man’s bare foot. The man jumped thinking he had been bitten by the snake and passed out. The wife, seeing her husband lying on the floor, ran to the neighbor’s house to call 911, thinking her husband had a heart attack.
Ambulance drivers arrived and ran into the house and placed the husband on a stretcher. As they were carrying the man out of the house, the snake came out from under the couch. Startled, one of the attendants dropped the stretcher. The husband fell and broke his arm. The wife seeing all this, fainted. It was just one of those days.
Have you ever had one of those days, when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed and things go from bad to worse? Sometimes it’s not just a day, sometimes it’s one of those weeks, sometimes it’s one of those months, sometimes it’s one of those years.
A Sunday School class was asked, “In your time of discouragement, what is your favorite Scripture?”
A young man said, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” (Psalm 23:1)
A middle age woman said, “God is my refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46:1)
Another woman said, “In this world you shall have tribulations, but be of good cheer, I have overcome this world.” (John 16:33)
Then Mr. Johns, who was 80 years old, stood up and shared, “‘and it came to pass’ 85 times in the Bible.” He went on to explain: “At 30, I lost my job with six hungry children and a wife to feed. I didn’t know how I would make it. At 40, my eldest son was killed overseas in the war. It knocked me down. At 50, my house burned to the ground. Nothing was saved out of the house. At 60, my wife of 40 years got cancer. It slowly ate away at her. We cried together many a night on our knees in prayer. At 65 she died. I still miss her today.”
“The pain I went through in each of these situations was unbelievable. I wondered where God was. But each time I looked in the Bible I saw one of those 85 verses that said, ‘and it came to pass.’ I felt that God was telling me, my pain and my circumstances were also going to pass and that God would get me through it.”
Then he concluded, “And it came to pass.”
That’s an important lesson to learn when we have one of “those” times in our life. With God’s help we can make it through terrible storms. We know, that this, too, will pass.
“Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”