Devotion 9.10.25

Jeremiah 12:5

5 “If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you,

  how will you compete with horses?

And if in a safe land you are so trusting,

  what will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?"

If I'm not mistaken, The Lubbock Avalanche Journal ran a headline on Monday (or Sunday) about Mayor Rudolph Guiliani's last days in office, being ended by term limits. He went from a man of promise and strong leadership to someone who was squandering his potential leadership. 

Guiliani had found the way to arrest and successfully try and convict the mob. He was a man who had been a US attorney in New York City, a powerful position, and used it to catalyze himself to President Reagan's justice department, and to launch his name into one of the more powerful mayorships in the US. His path was clear, until he squandered it.

Had he stood in front of God, no doubt asking for help, God may have asked him the very question he asked a young Isaiah. You got tuckered out racing men on foot; how will you race the horses or do in hostile territory?

His final days were shaping up to be a sad end to a once promising career. Monday, Sept 10, was fairly routine. It only is mentioned because it's less than 24 hours before a cataclysmic event hits the US on its own soil. An attack on the lower 48, the first of its kind.

How is Guiliani's squandering of leadership opportunities in life much like my own? When did I buckle under the pressure of the ordinary? Get bored from routines in life and go in search of meaning?

The question for us as men of God is not how we do in the big times, but how we do in the lulls? How do we perform in the daily? The routine, the mundane? God sends us here to do his Will daily. Most of our days are in the routine, the mundane. We should use each day given us as though our days are numbered.

Pray with me: Gracious God, Help me daily to find you in the most mundane of settings, in the ordinariness of life, and to thrive. Help me to not need the big events to define me, but instead, help me to find significance in the seemingly insignificant areas of my life. The changing of diapers, the folding of clothes, the routine maintenance on items around the house or cars, the little things my wife does. Help me to find you in all of these facets of life. In Christ's name, Amen.

Hope Men's Ministry is a ministry in service to Hope Lutheran Church and School. Our purpose is to grow, unite, and share God's Word to all men through meaningful activities. These activities center on fellowship, service, conversation, prayer, study and devotion as we seek to become men of God as He created us to be.