Holding it all together:

     You wake up, say hi to the wife, bye to the wife, get the kids in the car drive to school, say bye to the kids, say have a nice day, and drive to work.  In the back of your mind the water bill needs to be paid tomorrow, the heat, next week, rent is due today and your 350.00 dollars short!
     While driving to work, the truck begins to sputter and gasp...oh! no! forgot to put gas in the tank...truck stops while you frantically try and pull out of the traffic zone.  Hop out of the truck, get the gas can and pour 1.5 gallons in the tank, crank the truck, it starts thank God and you continue to drive to work.  Your mind already overwhelmed by today's events and it's not even 8 am yet!
     Welcome to life in America, your stretched, pulled and fried all because of ....well that's life here.  Running on minimum dollars but thankful to have even that.  I watch the people on the corners of the street that hold cardboard signs like, anything helps, homeless vet, or hungry, thinking of a cheeseburger!  Or the more outrageous sign holder like "cereal killer" like some now! 
     These are the things that I hold together daily all the while doing the best I can in the midst of some of the more crazy events of life.  So how do I do It?  I Pray and Pray and try and stir up the faith I know is there and let God worry about the future events and the daily ones also.  Somehow he does what he does and things work out.  Though not always the way I think it will.  I suppose that in the middle of all of these things the suffering that I do is not nearly on the magnitude of what the 1 st century Christians faced.
     Blamed for starting the fires of Rome, Nero had the Christians tortured, thrown to the Lions and torn apart and burned at stakes..  That is suffering.  Brutal. And that is just what the Devil is.
     Though you may think running out of gas and out of money may be small potatoes, let's extrapolate and look at what the Devil intended for you.
     Running out of gas extended times, means late to work, means a possible write up means three or more times multiplied and you are possibly out of that job.  Out of money for some extended time, possibly late on rent and then evicted by the landlord who no longer believes you intend to pay him.  Phone bill, heat bill, water bill all go unpaid and then your credit is shot. That scenario I have lived and worked my way out of at least two times in my life.  It is unpleasant, hard on family and hard on faith.  And it is what the Devil uses to interrupt our life to not necessarily kill us but make us doubt our
Lord's ability to intervene and help us.  It is the scenario of futility that the Devil will use to frustrate us.  Don't believe me...what about Job? the righteous man, wealthy and full of life who honored God and gave richly to his friends.  Satan sifted him with God's permission but he did not die.  All was taken from him down to the bone.  His skin raw and inflamed Satan tried to get him to doubt his God.
     Remember Nebuchadnezzar the King?  Grew hairy like an animal, skin and nails and lost his mind for a season until he acknowledged God was supreme.
     So we live as a created creatures sometimes unwilling to admit we need help and there's the rub.  God wants us to acknowledge him and wants us to know even in those circumstances he has our best interests in mind.  Seems impossible, but true.  Seems drastic because of the pride of life we have and the ability to rise up almost God-like in unimaginable circumstances and rebuild again and again.  Think Twin Towers...and again they rise ......the human spirit is almost unquenchable.....but not quite.