Rolled into a corner

The theme of this whole blog is trying to find inspiration in the not-so-obvious places, and this morning provided a serious challenge to that theme:

Some friends got rolled last night (toilet-papered). Not just any friends, mind you: the Kaylors. You know who I'm talking about? The ones who lost their mom/wife to cancer back in October? The ones who've been keeping together a very inspirational journal about getting their lives back together, which is linked here? And they get rolled last night! How could someone, ANYONE, do this knowing what this family has been through in the last few months? Doesn't this guy have enough to take care of without having to clean up his front yard? (That's been taken care of, BTW, for the most part) How do you explain this to his young children? Haven't they been exposed to enough hurt lately? This is not only wrong, it's just SICK!

I say this next part not to pat myself on the back, so if it comes across as self-congratulating, I apologize now.

I was so moved by this I grabbed a rake and a trash bag, went over and offered to clean it up. The look on the dad's face indicated his surprise at what had happened; saying his face fell doesn't do it justice. The hurt in his eyes..... what kind of sick person does this to someone still trying to get the lives of him and his children back together? Even the girls were kinda surprised by what they saw; I'm not sure they knew what to make of toilet paper in the trees.

Thankfully, I had plenty of time before work and was able to get most of it down. What prompted me to do this in the first place was anger and indignation at first; as I worked, it was as if the Lord asked me a question: "Haven't you figured out yet that I make everything work out for my glory?" In other words, yes this bad thing happened, but the result was that an opportunity opened up for someone to minister to these folks by offering to clean up for them. (Proverbs says this somewhere: Do good for others, especially if you have the opportunity to do so.)

St. Paul says we're supposed to rejoice in our trials and tribulations. Nice in theory; I've yet to put it into practice. That would've been an awkward front-door greeting: "Look what happened to you! Isn't this great? Come on, let's rejoice in this trial!" Pray that God takes away the hurt in the hearts of my friends, because I can only take care of the front yard. So, even though I'm thankful for the opportunity to minister this morning, and even realizing that there is evil in the world and nothing you or I or anyone not named Jesus Christ can do about it, there's that horrible sin of unresolved anger still floating around in me, as you can probably tell by the first couple of paragraphs. I'm still steamed about it.

God give me the strength to forgive, and even more strength to get over not knowing who it is to forgive. Sometimes I think Satan's greatest trick is to cause us/me to focus on the negative side of this instead of the positive. Focus on who did this, how can I find out who did it, and what I'm going to do if I ever find out. I'll waste more time in a day concentrating on that then anything else constructive, ministry or otherwise.

Unfortunately, at this moment, it's working, hence the title of today's post. God, please give me strength to see how You will bring good out of this. If it's none of my business, I can deal with that; but could you please at least remove this anger from my heart?

In Him and around the corner (and resisting the urge to go out tonight armed with toilet paper, eggs, Fruity Pebbles, silly string, and bleach),

Al