I know... who would believe that anyone could be busted by something that appeared on a home-making, hobby-building, time-engaging, recipe card-building, kid-craft idea, style-mongering, quotable website.

Me.  I was.

I was creeping on one of my friends Pinterest boards and I ran across a photo of a Bible verse.  Philippians 4:6-7  

 6-7Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.   The Message Bible

Busted.

Why?  Because I was fretting.  Worrying.  So much so that last night it took me almost three hours to fall asleep.   I'm good at worrying when I want to be.    I have years of experience at it.  Now that I'm done worrying, I can rest.

What happened?  I'm not going to bore you with the details.  Let's just say it's a big thing for me personally.  

Here's the gist of where I am right now.  At peace.  At total peace.  

Oh, I wasn't yesterday.  I did have a major attack of the old flesh that almost did me in.  In the past those attacks have lasted days, if not weeks. And they usually brought fighting, arguing, bickering, whatever you want to call it, between Ray and me.    Those attacks that bring worry, stress, nail-biting, and sleeplessness.  As I have matured in the Lord, I have those far less often.  A lot more time between attacks.   

I know I should probably have a stroke or something just to make matters better because worry, stress and strokes always make things better.   (Don't they?)   But I'm not.  

Not this time.

I've been in this place before... this place of having nowhere to look but up.   And it has always been enough before.  It will be enough now.

It will always be enough.

Today I was reading a page from The Case for A Creator by Lee Strobel..  He was writing on the subject of the earth being created by random happenstance. 

This example is my own, although closely linked to the example given in the text.  Suppose I was holding a bunch of markers in my hand, all with the caps removed and the felt tip exposed.  Now I take those markers and drop them from shoulder height onto the floor and several of them "accidentally" spell out my name accurately and completely.  Impossible, you say?  Of course it is. 

Yet those same people who would declare this to be impossible could be the same who stand on the infirm ground of claiming all of the universe "accidentally" fell together.  No Grand Designer.  No ultimate Plan.   If this is true, then why wouldn't the pens "accidentally" spell out my name?  It would seem the lesser of two improbabilities would be the writing.

"...it's supremely improbably that the fine-tuning of the universe could have occurred at random, but it's not at all improbably if it were the work of an intelligent designer.  So it's quite reasonable to choose the design theory over the chance theory.  We reason that way all of the time."  (Dr. Robin Collins... The Case for a Creator, Psalm 89:5-13)

This is scary.  But then I think that is probably the very definition of "walking by faith." 

Today is my first day back "on the job" at the church.  I left another job last week because Ray and I knew it was God's leading for me to work at the church and not at a restaurant.  So... goodbye restaurant and steady paycheck... hello sitting alone in an office at the back of the church building typing a blog.  Trying to work out my feelings of fear and inadequacy to do the work of God here in Muscatine, Iowa. 

It's something new.  It's exciting.  And I can't wait to see how it all works out.