Brian’s Perspective - Old Blog

Why is it that kids only get sick at 3 AM? Oh, they may run a mild fever at 8:00 PM, but they wait to bring out the heavy stuff, the carpet staining goo of death, until 3:00 AM almost with variation. I thought about writing President Bush and asking him to suggest legislation that would curtail this intrusion into my sanity producing sleep. Perhaps we could limit intestinal mishaps to the mid-afternoon and other digestive oddities to the mid-morning. That keeps our evenings free for sleep and protects meal times from all the foulness. But I fear that even Mr. Bush couldn’t do anything about this; it seems that it is the way God has made children. They only get really sick at 3 AM.

Sometimes it is my fault they get sick; but how was I to know that 14 slices of pizza or 3 gallons of soda will make a child ill? Why does four pounds of fudge make them queasy? They eat it with ravenous joy. They never complain when they eat it, but then at 3 AM they come into your room and say, “Dad, I don’t feel so…..” Then it is time to get the mop, vacuum, bucket, turpentine, and squeegee. Fudge covered, soda soaked pizza, is only pleasant the first time. How was I to know?

But other times it isn’t the soda laden pizza that gets them, it is the sick child that touched the monkey bar a day before they did, or sneezed on a toy, or the butterfly that flapped its wing over Guam and caused the hurricane, or whatever. It seems that sometimes you can never know that anything bad is going to happen; life is chaos. I bet most of us wish we could predict the exact moment when bad things were going to happen. Had we known when our children would be ill, we could have been prepared, either by having the little darlings poised in the respective position or, more ingeniously, having them already sent to Grandma’s house for the night. But I have never found any sure indicator that there will be trouble except for the observation, usually in hindsight, that there has been no trouble for a while.

We all get ourselves in trouble from time to time and it never happens when expected. How did we know the choices we made yesterday would have the consequences we are living with today? Or worse, how did we know that someone else’s choice or that blasted butterfly in Tunisia would alter the course of our lives forever! You cannot know when the trouble comes, but you can be prepared. The Psalmist said,

Therefore, let everyone who is godly pray to You in a time when You may be found; Surely in a flood of great waters they will not reach him. (Psalm 32:6)

We do not know when the flood waters are coming and in that moment it may be difficult to find the quiet voice of God in the tumult of our lives. But instead of seeking God in crisis, the psalmist counsels the godly person to seek God in the calm in order to be prepared for the coming flood. How do you seek God you ask? Start here…Exodus 34:6-7 and Acts 17:24-28.