Stanice Anderson

The Archer & The Arrow   

We all have times in our lives when it seems like everything is going against us.  Problems mount, illnesses come, frustrations multiply, and we feel like we can’t take one more bit of bad news and live!  However, if during those times we take our focus off the horrible circumstances that are surrounding us or the feelings or despair that are welling up inside of us and focus on what God has already brought us through in the days and years gone by-we come to believe He will work it out for us again and again and again!  

We have to set our faces like flint to walk by faith-to believe like my mentor, Dorine, always tells me, “Baby, it’s gonna be all right!”

I truly believe that nothing happens to us that isn’t already sifted through the hands of God first.  And because of that He knows and will give us just what we need to get through it.  Sometime, life is just like a master archer with a bow:  

To hit the target the bow has to be stretched way back to the absolute limits, but when the archer releases the arrow-WHOOSH-the arrow goes right where the master archer aims-the target!  Had it not been stretched, the arrow would have fallen to the ground, limp and defeated, having missed the mark.

Dear Heavenly Father: Thank you that you have given us the victory!  Help us to not focus on the situations that face us or the circumstances that surround us; but help us to stay focused on Your love for us.  Stretch us, if you must, so that we can be finely tuned instruments of Your Love in Your Hands.  Amen.  So be it!

Read James 1:2-5.  The Lord will meet you in the reading.

This is excerpt from story, In the Cellar of Afflictions, in my book, I Say A Prayer For Me, pgs 319-320