A Superstorm, a Super Grace, and a Super Plan

I have a message for you today....but first will "catch up" with you  following the superstorm, Sandy.  Here are two pics taken on each side of my house. (I apologize for the quality of the pics - they were taken with my cell phone.  My house is located to the immediate right of the bottom picture..the branches of that tree brushed our bedroom window as it fell.  The other tree, the one in our backyard, took down a fence and it too brushed against our house.  So you can see...God was at work.  Our house was in exactly the right spot -- if it was to move to either side by only one foot, it would have been smashed by a tree.

We had no power for three days and we had a borrowed generator that only would hold enough gas to run for an hour and a half  Because of the rate of water rising in our sump pump, we had to run the generator every two hours to keep up with the rising water...  That meant in the cold and rain, day and night, we had to go outside and gas up the generator and get it started again.  It was a pain in the neck -literally (just ask my husband)--but it was so much better than suffering another flooded basement.  I am forever grateful to the friend who loaned us that generator.

So, what is my message for you today?  Every day I get a verse from a radio station that sends out "verses of the day"  to people's email.  Here is today's verse:

For  we are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
   --Ephesians 2:10, NLT

I was just reading one of many individual stories of people with RA and looking at photos of a woman whose feet look like mine and this verse really struck me.  God created me----and he created me with this disease.  But he has created me anew to carry out his work with, because of, or in spite of this disease.  He has made me and formed me deliberately--with all my bumpy joints and aches and pains and my limitations in mobility because it is ONLY THUS that I am equipped and ready to carry out his work and his plan for my life....

This is a huge thought and one that requires more time and more wrapping of my mind around it....But think about it for yourself.  God created you--you specifically --with your gifts and challenges ...because he has work for you to do and it is only with the circumstances that he gave you that you would be able to meet the requirements of the task he has given you!  Satan hates that.  And he wants us to get complaining about how God made us.  He wants us to whine and tell God how useless we are because of the way he made us...when in fact it's the exact opposite of the truth.  God made you you because ONLY you can carry out the work that he has set for you to do.

So instead of waiting around for God to change us or heal us or remove our difficulties....maybe we should start looking around to find the work that ONLY we can do.  Because it is there  just waiting for usl