When the Going Gets Tough

Have you ever heard someone say, "Things will get worse before they will get better"? If eagles could talk to each other, that is about what Mother Eagle would say to her young when they ask her why she is tearing the soft lining out of their nest.

About the time the young eagles are ready to fly the mother eagle begins to pick away the padding in the nest. This leaves rough jagged sticks exposed which prick the tender skin of the eaglets. After a day or so of this discomfort they are fed up and ready to go somewhere else even if they have to fly. They have learned life's first lesson, which is that things are always changing.

We get tired of doing one thing and are often eager to move on to the next thing. But even though we like to change what we are doing we don't like it so well when someone changes things for us. We like the old way better, for it was more comfortable; but that is the way of life. God, too, has great surprises in store for us. He knows that if we stay too long in one place we shall not be able to move on to the next rung of life's ladder.

Just when we think we have learned all there is to know and have found some of the answers, along comes change and we have to begin all over again. Just when we think we've mastered arithmetic and know how to add, along come subtraction, multiplication, division, and fractions! We take them in our stride, for we are ready.

Change is painful sometimes, but we have to accept it. And, too, as we move from one level to another, God is there; and that helps. So expect changes to come. But look for God each time.

Thank you, God, for letting me live in this interesting world.