Our garage door broke recently. Well, recently might be questionable, it’s already been close to 7 weeks. The garage door is old, extremely heavy, and was on our list of things that needed attention when it comes to house maintenance. It does not have censors along the bottom and having kids running in and out and playing near it made us a little uneasy at times. God helped me to see His mercy in something so ordinary.

We were leaving on a family outing and had just left the house but forgot something and had to turn around and go back. We were only a couple of blocks from home. When we pulled into the driveway we couldn’t get the garage door open so we had to go in the front door. Mike went in to find what we left behind and I went to look in the garage and found the motor clicking on the opener and smoke was coming out. It was God’s mercy that he let us see the problem before it got out of hand. God’s mercy started when we forgot something and had to go back. God’s mercy followed with helping us notice that we needed to turn off the electrical thus preventing a fire. God’s mercy continued in a bigger more profound way as we were traveling to our outing. Mike and I were a little discouraged knowing that this would be a larger expense that we would have to cover sooner than we anticipated. Here was another discouragement added to a list of ongoing trials of health issues, work challenges, parenting woes, and now a bit of a financial burden as well. While talking this over in the car I was given perfect peace in recalling the scripture that says, “in this world you will have trouble, but take heart for I have overcome the world.” I’m not saying that all the things I listed could be classified as “trouble”. Some fall more into a category of “inconvenience”. There are so many bigger things that fall into the category of “trouble”. But it does seem that each day does has trouble of it’s own. In my own mixed up, messy thinking, I am prone to wake up expecting or rather hoping that things will go smoothly, without trouble. I am not saying that one should arise in the morning and hope for trouble either. But in reality I ought to expect that each day will probably have trouble of some kind, and that God’s mercy will be more than sufficient to help me through any given trouble on any given day. Especially if I am satisfied in Him and not the events of the day, and also trusting in his promises of sustaining grace and mercy. If we make it to the end of the day without much trouble than that is a gift from God and is mercy itself. It should not be my agenda, although it often can be, to get through everyday without troubles lest I become discouraged that it was so. And are those things that trouble my heart even relevant when people around the world in Myanmar and China sit without food and homes or even worse without hope in God? Sometimes they are relevant but many times they are simply inconveniences. We have so much to be thankful for. I am not trying to minimize in anyway troubles that we face, they are real and yet sometimes we find ourselves fretting over things that have little significance in light of eternity.

Preaching to myself with this post and praying for new eyes to see His mercy in and out of seasons of trouble and for grace to never be too easily satisfied in earthly things, joys, comforts and my own agenda of how I like things to go. Isn’t it amazing how God can take a broken garage door to remind me of His great mercy!

(P.S. We are getting our new garage door this Friday..Lord willing.)