Hope and Coping With the Situation You're In

Here is a funny news story.

A 6-foot-tall, 275-pound bearded man crashed a children's birthday party in Oak Forest, identified himself as "vengeance," then helped himself to a piece of cake, police said.

The incident occurred earlier this month at a home in the 14800 block of South Landings Lane in the south suburb, Deputy Police Chief Nick Sparacino said.

When the owner of the home asked the man who he was, the intruder replied, "I am vengeance. I am the knight. I am Batman." Then the man went into the kitchen, cut a piece of birthday cake, took it into the living room and ate it.

After continued questioning by the homeowner, the man left the house and drove off in a red 1988 Cadillac.

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Another news story:

Wow. China is more moral that America. Now true, they don't have our freedoms, but in this case they are more moral.

On a side note, I don't see where the Bible calls us to politically free, but I do see where it tells us to be moral. We are called to be moral and free in Christ.

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One last news story that made me angry this week. I hate liars.

The Russian government was stating that only 354 people were held hostage in the school. It turns out that over 1200 people were held hostage and the lying government knew about. I don't know what manipulative advantage they were trying to gain by lying, but never the ends never justify the means. That seems to be a current theme lately.

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Yesterday was a great day. Jason Wilson is down visiting from Alma. I spent the afternoon hanging out with Paychop, who preached at our church, and his great family. Then we were able to work on Jason's car.

Jason arrived at 1:00 very early Sunday morning. His muffler had fallen down right before pulling into our driveay. We figured that we would get it fixed on Monday when the local mechanic would be open. (Antwerp has only one mechanic shop.) After discussing it with my dad on Sunday afternoon, we were faced to realize the mechanic shop wouldn't be open on Monday due to it being Labor Day. We were going to have to do the work on our own. Neither one of us are mechanics.

So around 5:00 we drove to Defiance to buy the parts we would use. Now, we weren't trying to do a permanent fixing job; we just wanted to do a good enough job that Jason would be able to get home and take it to a real mechanic. We bought the stuff to jury-rig the whole Muffler system. 3 and 1/2 hours later we were done. It worked. Life was good.

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The sermon I heard yesterday was great. It contrasted hope with wishing. Hope results in us actually believing something is going to happen. Wishing is just wishing something will happen.

This wasn't in the sermon, but when we have hope that "(Rom 8:28 NASB) that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose" we can be assured of good coming about from all sorts of bad if we are people who actually love God.

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I heard a survey a few months ago about lucky people. The general gist of the survey was that lucky people always looked for the positive in every situation and usually found it. They say that they have "good luck." Negative people always give up when they begin to not go the way they intended. They then label their poor results "bad luck."

I play a lot of board games, and there are certain people who just get frustrated and freeze up when things aren't going their way. They just give up.

Some people are like that on things that really matter. When a situation in life happens that didn't fit in with their original plan, they just give up.

Hope gives us the ability to never give up no matter how bad the situation is. We hope (are assured) that God is going to use the situation for the good of those who love Him. We never have to give up.

Watch out for the potholes.