What’s Driving You? (3)

Most have heard the phrase, “He’s so heavenly minded, he’s of no earthly good.” So rare is someone like that, that I’ve not met even one. Not in my whole life. In fact, it’s been my experience that the more heavenly minded a person has been, the more crucial they’ve found it to be focussed on the needs of earth. Let me give you an example.

On the weekend Wendy and I attended a workshop on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. That’s a long term to describe the brain damage that occurs to the pre born child when the woman drinks alcohol while pregnant. Six of our seven adopted children have been affected by this tragedy. Hundreds of parents and grandparents were at this conference. Most were, like us, people who had adopted children with FASD. Some were mothers who too late realised that they had damaged their children by drinking while pregnant. Virtually all were people who loved the Lord; we were a huge room filled with heavenly minded people. All who spoke at some point during the weekend gave God’s love for them as the reason for sharing their love with disabled children. There were three characteristics of these heavenly minded people that stood out at this conference:
Love;
Joy;
Peace.


This post has to do with Peace:
Fetal Alcohol brain damage is devastating. There is no treatment, no recovery, no cure, no growing out of it. This is organic brain damage that alters a person’s ability to cope on so many levels. One of the greatest areas of damage is the inability or diminished ability to learn from mistakes. It’s been estimated that 75-80% of our prison population is made up of people with Fetal Alcohol Brain Damage.

Caring for these children - and they remain children despite their chronological age (eg. Our 33-year-old daughter behaves like a 14-year-old and that is who she will always be) is a challenge to say the least. Yet to listen to the parents at this conference there was an all pervading sense of peace that was heard throughout the weekend. My own comment was that, “I have peace because I trust in God, not a theoretical trust but in reality.”

“Those who trust in the Lord are like Mt. Zion; unmoved by any circumstance.”

God has rescued all of these children from homes where drug addiction, neglect, physical and emotional abuse were the norm. He is not going to do that and then just leave them hanging. I’ll preempt atheists right here who will say, “But He didn’t rescue them from FASD did He?” You have to understand, this kind of comment comes from people who cannot envision “good” unless it is absent pain, suffering and loss. Hyper allergic to pain, atheists cannot see any good in anything unless it comes packaged in pleasure. We, and not God invited evil into the universe. Rather than making Himself absent from the consequences of our decision, rather than remaining aloof to suffering, God took His own medicine. He came into this world to use suffering for a much, much greater good. In fact, our Creator has used evil itself to bring about its own defeat - not its destruction but its defeat.

“Will not God, who did not spare His own Son, also give us everything that we need?”

We can release our loved ones to His care knowing without doubt that He has their best interests in mind. We can have peace knowing that we can love without needing to be loved in return. We can give of our time, our money, our emotions, our selves not needing a reciprocation of those efforts on the part of those to whom we are showing love.

“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are fixed on You oh Lord.”

satan roams around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. And what does a lion look for? For the weak, the lame, the damaged. There are few more vulnerable to evil attack than children damaged by their mother’s alcohol use. Our children’s lives are precarious at best. Many fall and fall hard and yet the parents that we met had about them a peace, an ease of life, a joy and a love that truly is supernatural. That is why we can abide by these words, “Do not be anxious about anything (be at peace) but in everything, by prayer and petition and with thanksgiving, present your requests to God and if you do this, the peace of God which is beyond human comprehension will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

The workshop that we attended had become a community of people who were able to experience peace in the fullest sense of the word. This, not of our own ability or will but peace as a gift of Creator God.