God's Wild Ride

(1 John 1:1-4, Psalm 4)

   When my wife, Amy, and I started dating, I came up with a strategy to encourage her to fall more in love with me. She was a lot in love with me from the beginning, but I wanted to increase that.

   What I decided to do was to take her to the Astro World. Once we had wandered around the amusement park for a while, and had enjoyed some of the games and food, I coolly asked her if she wanted to ride the Texas Cyclone. Amy had never been on the Texas Cyclone ride before. But I had. I knew how wild the Texas Cyclone really was. She didn't have any idea because it looked like an innocent ride.

   I knew that this ride would scare the daylights out of her, and how scary the ride really was. But I hadn't told her that. I had only mentioned that we should go on a nice ride together.

   So we got on the Texas Cyclone. The thing began to shoot out making it seem like our small car was going to fly right off of the edge of the track. Amy screamed. Then she scooted closer to me. Our car veered to the right and then shot out again making it seem like we were going to zoom straight out into mid-air. Amy screamed again. Then she scooted even more closely to me this time. By the end of the ride, Amy wasn't sitting far away from me at all. She was sitting as close as possible. That had been my plan.

   I had wanted Amy to sit closer all along. The Texas Cyclone accomplished that. Sometimes God puts us on a wild ride. Life seems to be out of our control. At times, God allows these situations because He knows they will move us closer to Him and when we get closer to Him, we will discover that He is more than we ever imagined Him to be.