Thursday, November 22, 2012

Okay

Things are good here.  I am in a good place with much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving Day.  I wrote this post quite a while ago and have no idea why I never published it--and even though I am better than "okay," I thought I would share it. 

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Saturday, August 4
Forward Day by Day (Publication)

Psalm 27:
The LORD is the strength of my life, of whom then shall I be afraid?

Montgomery, Alabama, 1961.  James Zwerg sat inside a bus and watched men with bats, chains and clubs advance.  A member of the Freedom Riders, a group of black and white college students who were traveling throughout the South to desegregate public transportation, he feared he would be killed. 

When other students first had asked him to join the Freedom Riders, James read Psalm 27 to find courage.  Rejected by his parents because of his involvement in the civil rights movement, he was particularly touched by the fourteenth verse; "Though my mother and father forsake me, the Lord will receive me." 

James volunteered to be the first one off the bus.  The mob battered him.

It would be nice if a neat, happy ending followed, but Jesus never promised us there were no costs.  Anger and guilt plagued James, and he sought therapy.  Yet he calls the experience one of the most beautiful in his life.  In the midst of the beating, as he prayed for strength to remain nonviolent and forgive, he felt an overwhelming presence and peace, and knew he would be okay.

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"Okay" just has to be good enough a lot of times.  "Okay" gets a bad wrap, I think.  When you look at it from one side, "okay" seems to be a bit lackluster.  But when you look at "okay" from the other side,  its beauty just might be revealed in it's very lack of ugliness.  "Okay" is also where you have to pass through on your way to "even better."   So, I'll take "okay," and be glad for it.