LifeLink Devotional

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Colossians 1:11 May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy…

Thanks to some faithful readers who sent me this story. It’s just what I needed today!

The Ant and the Contact Lens: a true story

Brenda was almost halfway to the top of the tremendous granite cliff. She was standing on a ledge where she was catching her breath. This was her first rock climb.

As she rested there, the safety rope snapped against her eye and knocked one of her contact lenses out of her eye. ‘Great’, she thought. ‘Here I am on a rock ledge, hundreds of feet from the bottom and hundreds of feet to the top of this cliff, and now my sight is blurry.’ She looked and looked, hoping that somehow it had landed on the ledge. But it just wasn’t there.

She felt the panic rising in her, so she began praying. She prayed for calm, and she prayed that she may find her contact lens.

When she got to the top, a friend examined her eye and her clothing for the lens, but it was not to be found. Although she was calm now that she was at the top, she was saddened because she could not clearly see across the range of mountains. She thought of the Bible verse ‘The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth.’

She thought, ‘Lord, You can see all these mountains. You know every stone and leaf, and You know exactly where my contact lens is. Please help me.’

Later, when they had hiked down the trail to the bottom of the cliff they met another party of climbers just starting up the face of the cliff. One of them shouted out, ‘Hey, you guys! Anybody lose a contact lens?’

The climber had found her contact lens. He had noticed an ant moving slowly across a twig on the face of the rock. The ant was carrying it!

The story doesn’t end there. Brenda’s father is a cartoonist. When she told him the incredible story of the ant, the prayer, and the contact lens, he drew a cartoon of an ant lugging that contact lens with the caption, ‘Lord, I don’t know why You want me to carry this thing. I can’t eat it, and it’s awfully heavy. But if this is what You want me to do, I’ll carry it for You.’

As we consider the burdens that we are carrying right now, I think it would do all of us some good to say, ‘God, I don’t know why You want me to carry this load. I can see no good in it and it’s awfully heavy. But, if You want me to carry it, I will.’

God is my source of existence. He is my Savior. He provides me with all the strength I need to function every day and accomplish His purpose for me. Without Him, I am nothing, but with Him, I am strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy.

Pastor John