October 20, 2008

OUT OF THE ZONE!

How we love to have everything neat and tidy, all taped up so that we can understand it, cope with it, never be unduly discomforted by what it might contain for us ... always working for the comfort zone; working for the dollars that buy us the comfort zone; using the dollars to buy the things that make the comfort zone comfortable.

Then something happens that shakes the comfort zone a little, rattles it around, and leaves us 'all shook up' and wondering how to do life when it is a little out of control.  Maybe the severity of the shaking means we might even need something our dollars can't buy ... maybe we would even need something man cant do for us, and we have nowhere to go.  Maybe we need something beyond everything natural to help us, or nothing can help us at all!

Now we have a chance to discover a wonderful truth ... miracles don't happen in the comfort zone because you don't need them there!  

Our television adverts constantly ask "Are you ready?".  They are talking of course about the constant possibility we live with of an earthquake or eruption that would require different action, different life, different survival techniques - way out of the comfort zone in an instant of time.

So, how many of us have truly faced the question of 'shaking', of a messing with our comfort zone without warning?  How many of us truly grapple with what we would do, and how we would get through it.

Maybe the first shaking we face is the looking beyond our comfort zone into the things around us that are already falling apart.  Looking at the lives that are broken and shattered, the families that are being torn apart by poverty, violence, addictions. 

"Are you ready?"  Ready to really look at the people and situations around you that have lost their comfort zone and have hearts crying out for help where there seems to be no help of any kind?

"Are you ready?"  Ready to extend a hand, a hope, a prayer?

As you begin to look and respond you begin to move into the realm where miracles take place.  Miracles of love, hope and restoration.  A place where we need more than money can ever buy us.

"Are you ready?"  To look for a source of love, hope, power and miracles.  Would you pray, would you love, would you go?

Go to the lost, confused people right here in the neighbourhood.    (Mat 10:6) "The Message"   

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