SURPRISES

It was supposed to be 50 degrees here yesterday. We had a meeting on the other side of town at 2:00 and the bank's temperature sign read 32. Needless to say, it never made it to 50. On our way home, we had a sudden surprise-it started snowing! It was coming down really hard and was beautiful (though totally unexpected). We went to Kroger's and when we came out, the snow had stopped just as quickly as it had started. Do you like surprises? I love getting a surprise gift or card or phone call from an old friend. I always want my Christmas and birthday presents to be a surprise. When I had some daffodils bloom in an urn in my garage one February, that was a nice surprise. (I forgot that I'd planted some extra bulbs in this urn when I moved it into the garage at Christmas.) There are good surprises and then there are bad surprises,too. When we got a letter from the water company telling us our meter reading was extremely high and we probably had a leak, that was NOT a good surprise. (we did have a leak and had to have the pipes replaced from the outside of our house to the water meter at the road-ugh!) When your husband gets a call in the middle of the night that someone's been taken to the hospital gravely ill, that's a bad surprise. When someone jumps out and scares you, that's not the kind of surprise I like. We enjoy the good kind of surprises but we don't care for the bad ones. Sometimes God allows the unpleasant surprises to jump out at us. Other times, He blesses us with special ones, like rainbows or sudden but quickly passing snowstorms on a day that's supposed to be 50 degrees. How do you handle surprises? When they're bad ones-ask for God's strength and guidance or comfort. Lean on Him. Search his Word for wisdom. When you get a nice surprise-remember to say Thank-you, Lord! I pray you will be blessed with only good surprises today!