Dear Lord; Happy Meditations Monday Father!<\/p>\n
And once again Lord, we lay behind us yet another lovely weekend filled with family, friends and Your obvious Love for us all.\u00a0 While the scorching weather restricted our outdoor activities, there were many Blessings to be found inside with good company, good food and great fun to be had by all.\u00a0 Thank You so much for those days of respite Father!<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s Meditations Monday<\/span><\/em> Scripture comes from Chapter 9 of the Gospel of John:<\/p>\n \u201cAs he went along, he saw a man blind from birth.\u00a0 His disciples asked him, \u201cRabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?\u201d\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cNeither this man nor his parents sinned,\u201d said Jesus, \u201cbut this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.\u201d\u201d \u2013 John 9:1-3 (NIV)<\/strong><\/p>\n Now Father, something I hear quite regularly from people going through difficulties in their lives is \u201cWhat did I do to deserve this?\u201d<\/em> or \u201cWhy is God doing this to me?\u201d<\/em>.\u00a0 I\u2019ll admit it, I\u2019ve even had those thoughts myself over the years.\u00a0 In the case of this passage, when Jesus and His disciples came across a man who had been blind since birth, the question was raised as to whose sin was at fault for his affliction; the man\u2019s or his parents.\u00a0 Jesus clearly replied that it was in fact neither, but instead was intended to allow for Your Grace to be made manifest.<\/p>\n This is an important and powerful truth Father, and one that I fear we all miss now and again.\u00a0 As the limited beings we are, we try desperately to put everything into a \u201cCause and Effect\u201d<\/em> bubble.\u00a0 And while quite often there are certainly consequences for our actions, not all earthly suffering is a direct result of a specific \u201cInstigating\u201d<\/em> sin.<\/p>\n When my son Jonathan was born and we were initially given his grim diagnosis, I spent many hours asking \u201cWhy?!?\u2026 Why would You do this to us?!?\u201d<\/em>\u00a0 I was angry, and scared, and very insistently sought answers that at the time, seemed never to come.\u00a0 Ten years later, I realize now that Your Plan for his life, and for mine to a great extent, needed those events to unfold as they did.\u00a0 Our lives, and the lives of many others were altered by his struggle, and Blessed in ways we\u2019re still unraveling today.\u00a0 We weren\u2019t being persecuted for something we\u2019d done, but were instead walking a journey designed by the One with the \u201cBig Picture\u201d <\/em>in His sight.<\/p>\n \u201cbut this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Heavenly Father, as this week begins I pray that in times of trial you open our hearts and minds to this fundamental truth.\u00a0 Let us see past our desire to seek fault and lay blame, and gain strength from the knowledge that Your Path for our lives comes from a far greater perspective than our own.<\/p>\n Amen.<\/p>\n ~Phather Phil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Lord; Happy Meditations Monday Father! And once again Lord, we lay behind us yet another lovely weekend filled with family, friends and Your obvious Love for us all.\u00a0 While the scorching weather restricted our outdoor activities, there were many Blessings to be found inside with good company, good food and great fun to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[724,243,168,256,419,12,555,1575,107,1577,829,1571,915,546,255,1003,487,1579,4,173,6,228,24,661,1581,966,1576,1568,1447,1572,1584,1580,140,593,916,1578,269,1574,116,109,60,1583,78,1567,206,1325,238,141,274,1525,392,1570,887,572,217,291,683,727,1569,1358,1582,117,86,777,114,730,1365,481,1573],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-actions","tag-big-picture","tag-bless","tag-blessed","tag-blessing","tag-blessings","tag-blind","tag-blind-since-birth","tag-care","tag-cause-and-effect","tag-company","tag-days-of-respite","tag-dear-lord","tag-difficult","tag-difficulties","tag-disciple","tag-earth","tag-earthly-suffering","tag-family","tag-father","tag-fear","tag-friend","tag-friends","tag-fundamental","tag-fundamental-truth","tag-god","tag-gods-grace","tag-gods-love","tag-gods-plan","tag-gospel-of-john","tag-greater-perspective","tag-grim-diagnosis","tag-heart","tag-heavenly","tag-heavenly-father","tag-instigating-sin","tag-jesus","tag-jesus-and-his-disciples","tag-jonathan","tag-journey","tag-knowledge","tag-lay-blame","tag-life","tag-lovely-weekend","tag-meditation","tag-meditations-monday","tag-mental","tag-mind","tag-minds","tag-niv","tag-obvious","tag-outdoor-activities","tag-passage","tag-powerful","tag-pray","tag-question","tag-realize","tag-rest","tag-scorching-weather","tag-scripture","tag-seek-fault","tag-son","tag-strength","tag-struggle","tag-thank-you","tag-thoughts","tag-times-of-trial","tag-week","tag-what-did-i-do-to-deserve-this"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-jb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1191,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions\/1191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}