Daily Lent Devotions from Church Street UMC
Thursday, March 18
By Carl M. Bennett, March 17, 1979
The Loss of Power
Read: 1 Chronicles 29:12
On a recent winter morning, I drove to the campus of one of our Holston Conference Colleges where I am Chairman of the Board of Trustees. In mid-afternoon of the day before my visit, the entire area experienced a cold rain which was accompanied by freezing wind. The combination of these two forces of nature caused trees and their limbs to be covered with thick layers of ice.
When I reached the campus, the weight of the ice had already caused many tree limbs to break and fall to the ground. Trees that had not broken were leaning toward the ground. An Executive Committee Meeting was just getting ready to start in the library when all of the lights in the building went out. A tree limb broke at that moment, fell across the electric wires leading to the library and pulled the wires loose from the source of the electric power.
The power for our lives comes from God. The strength for our bodies comes from God. So long as we hold God’s hand we can receive the power to do great things, bring honor to our families and our associates and ourselves. Riches, whatever we conceive them to be, are possible through God’s powerful hand.
At times, when we have experiences that are difficult, unpleasant and unrewarding, we may feel that everything is against us. At such times we may have doubts not only about ourselves but about our connection with God. We may feel a loss of power.
When these things happen we need only stop and reassure ourselves that nothing can separate us from the love of God. All we need to do is reach out in prayer in order to find that God’s hand, with his strength and power, is always within reach. Then we will know that the connection has not been broken.
Prayer
Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the strengths in our lives. We pray that we may never forget that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
