A final thought on thrash. One Sunday, I heard a story about Enterprise Alabama, a small community near the Florida panhandle. The town center is known for its rather odd historic monument: a fountain that features a statue of a beautiful woman in a flowing gown, holding a giant version of a Boll Weevil. What’s strange is the fact that this insect is an agricultural pest, and the female figure holds it high over her head in tribute fashion. An inscription says, “In profound appreciation of the Boll Weevil and what it has done as the herald of prosperity.”
Initially, I thought of high school boys late at night, with pranks on their minds. Wikipedia confirmed my suspicions. Vandalism has been a constant issue throughout the years. I had to read on.
The story behind it all was far more interesting. The boll weevil made its way to Alabama from Mexico in 1915. In those days, farming was the economy, and cotton was its cash cow. By 1918, farmers were losing entire crops to the beetle. A man named H. M. Sessions saw the insect plague as an opportunity to convert the area’s produce to peanut farming. He convinced another farmer to back his venture. Their first crop covered all their debt, and others farmers swiftly followed suit. Later on cotton was planted again but a shift had occurred: Farmers diversified their crops, and that change brought prosperity to their county. Bon Fleming, a local business owner, had the idea to build the monument. He recognized how something disastrous can actually serve as a catalyst for change.
The question to ask … Was it odd, or was it God? Could this be a story of God Thrash?
Of course God thrash is epic all over the Bible. As spectators reading long after the fact, we can see how God brought good from disaster–the cross and resurrection being the most extraordinary thrash moves of God.
The problem comes when you are caught in the middle of a catastrophe, and left wondering how Something-This-Bad could possibly fit with the purposes of God, or any good thing for that matter. I don’t have grandiose answers for that, but I have learned a few things.
John Eldredge said that life is a series of small stories. We tend to get stuck in the small stories, bumping our heads on the low ceilings. But if God is telling a larger story about a greater reality, things begin to look different.
For example, in Africa the growing orphan situation is nothing short of catastrophic. AIDS and war, like boll weevils, have decimated the landscape. My friend Rob said that tribal hatred is actually the worst problem, even greater than AIDS. How can generational bitterness, centuries old, ever change?
Yet in our village, orphans from three different tribes are growing up as buddies and BFFs, and this has started a shift that could transform an ageless problem. With a whole generation of parents gone, children are not being taught to hate each other. Something new is happening.
As Tolstoy said, “True life is lived when tiny changes occur.” If a tiny bug can bring prosperous changes to a farming community, just think of the possibilities with a God who uses thrash for good.
2HMAK4B6SKZA
“It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord.” (Isa 6:1)
“Take it personally: In the year that the one who stood to me for all that God was, died…I gave up everything? I became ill? I got disheartened? or ….I saw the Lord?” (Oswald Chambers)
During one of my most discouraging and darkest times, a time of great losses, a time when my Christian friends betrayed, abandoned and slandered me….it looked like I was losing and a loser, but in God’s kingdom I was winning. I kept my mouth shut and waited for God to defend me. I tried not to become the evil that was being done to me… I clung to God and in the year my life was trashed, I saw God and His plans were for good and not for harm.
With God something new is always happening, keep the faith and be willing to move into the larger story. Love wins!
I am always amazed at how God can take something that is so hard and unexpected and seemingly devastating and turn it around for good. Two instances in our ministry instantly come to mind. Once a country’s local government decided to confiscate all 60 of our wheelchairs which were already assigned to specific needy children with disabilities. They had no intention of giving them back to us so that we could individually fit each child with our therapists. God intervened and gave our missionary friend an on the spot parable about the wheelchairs and giving which touched the hearts of the politicians. God opened up doors with the government officials and they received the press they wanted and the children received the wheelchairs. New opportunities to share God’s love and develop relationships for future ministry resulted because of the “thrash.”
We spent a full year organizing a distribution trip to Kenya. Every day had a detailed itinerary. We were told the 200 wheelchairs had arrived in Nairobi. All 24 team members boarded the plane for Africa. Then Thrash happened. The organization we were working with told us that the chairs in reality were not there but were lost at sea. What do we do with 24 people for 3 weeks and no chairs? How can we tell all these precious people waiting for chairs that they are lost? Panic, despair, stress and grief are just a few words that come to mind. Once again God took an impossible situation and turned it around for good. In the end God taught us to trust in him, not in all our organized plans. More lives were touched, more ministry happened and all the chairs ended up being fit to each child. We serve an amazing God of the impossible who’s love never fails.
God speaks in themes!!! I am in a study of Esther, video taught by Beth Moore and I must share. Beth Moore explains “Two literary devices are employed magnificently in the Book of Esther. The first is called “chiastic structure”. What in the world is it? In its tightest form, chiasic structure is inverted parallelism. In other works, it is a reversal of structures to emphasize a overarching point.
The “chi” that begins the word chiastic is the 22nd letter of the Greek alphabet. It is written like this: X . The letter itself represents the crisscross literary structure of a chiasm (literally in Greek, a crossing)”. . .the second literary device is called “peripety.” Peripety: a sudden turn of events that reverses the expected or intended outcome” particularly in a literary work.”
love love love love this whole concept.
you have taken it to the most wonder-filled of places.
important! true! compelling! out of the box! i want more!
and i am pretty sure god does,too.
suzee b.