Thanksgiving Stories

I watched a riveting video on YouTube this week titled, "How To Ride A Backward Bicycle". It is part of the "Smarter Every Day" video series that my wife and I enjoy on a regular basis. This particular episode dealt with this specific challenge, could someone learn to ride a bike that was engineered to turn the opposite direction of the steering column? 

On the surface this would not appear to be a difficult challenge, I mean all that is required is to reprogram your brain to understand that when you turn the steering wheel right the bike will go left and vice versa. But here is the crazy part, in this video, no one can successfully ride this bike! Hundreds of people have taken up this challenge and no one can ride this bike more than 2 or 3 feet before crashing.*

Why?

Six Hundred Years Ago . . .

In a kingdom driven by dynastic war, a young shepherdess receives religious visions, revealing that she is her nation’s only hope in leading her country to victory. At sixteen, she convinces the local garrison commander near her town to give her a military escort to the court of the uncrowned prince-royal. She achieved this by accurately predicting the outcome of a battle taking place more than a hundred miles away. (Though, notably, she’d already won several of his soldiers to her cause before she ever made her prophecy.) 

This was not the first time she had won over the confidence of authority figures in her life, she prevailed in a legal trial when her father sought to bound her to a marriage obligation to a man she did not even know. Somehow, she convinced the Judge to free her from the obligation her father had made. At the age of fourteen. Without any legal education. 

So after receiving her military escort, she arrives at the French Court, where she correctly identifies the prince hiding in the crowd of courtiers. She strikes up a conversation with the prince and whispers a secret known only to the two of them and God. (We still have no idea what this secret was, though it has been rumored to be the prayer the future king had prayed to His Creator. Joan of Arc refused to reveal this confidence even under torture.)

God Knows The Difference

After any election there will always be winners and losers. Those who feel vindicated and those who feel betrayed. But how we react to the consequences of elections reveals a great deal about our knowledge and faith in God's goodness. 

Let's check out this scripture from the book of Jeremiah:

“Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: ‘Like these good figs, so will I acknowledge those who are carried away captive from Judah, whom I have sent out of this place for their own good, into the land of the Chaldeans. For I will set My eyes on them for good, and I will bring them back to this land; I will build them and not pull them down, and I will plant them and not pluck them up. Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the LORD; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart.’” (Jeremiah 24:4-7)

Now these verses are not referencing the results of an election, they are referring to a hostile takeover. Some of the people of Israel were stripped of their land, separated from their families, and taken away to a foreign country where they were to live as slaves. Feeling better about your post-election status now? 

Trust Not In Princes

Praise the Lord, my soul.

I will praise the Lord all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save.

When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing.

Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God.

He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them—

He remains faithful forever.