Have you ever gone through a rough patch of time?  Of course, you have.  We all have. I went through one recently.

It was Sunday morning and I was getting all my last-minute things together for church.  I had my Sunday School lesson plans.  I run the sound and video screens during our service and I had prepared all of that material too.  I got in my car and drove to church on a chilly, rainy day.

On the short trip to church, I was thinking about our pastor.  He was headed to a new adventure and that Sunday would be his last.  I love our pastor.  I have become a better man over the six years he has served our church not in small part because of the great example he set every day in his life. I hated to see him go.

In addition, we had just completed our annual Run for God Run at the Mill.  The race went well, but our number of participants was down.  I had not done a very good job of promoting and getting the word out about our race.  It hurt me that I let the Run for God team down.

There had also been the text message that had gone out alluding to something on my other job that had gone undone.  In this case, it actually WAS done, but I was lumped in with a group that had largely failed and so I was guilty by proxy.

Oh, and there was that tax thing.  The IRS would be looking for my completed tax documents within the next two days and I had not started on them yet.

I arrived at church felling pretty inadequate.  I dropped off my Sunday School materials and went to the sound room to make sure all of my presentation and audio plans would work that morning.  It was on the thumb drive I carry on my key chain.  But it wasn’t on my key chain.  I had left it at home.

Fortunately, I live very close to my church and could go home and retrieve it.  As I drove home, what was earlier a sprinkle had turned to a hard rain.  I would get soaked because I was too forgetful to remember my thumb drive.  I ran in the house, picked up my thumb drive, and stopped dead in my tracks as I was about to exit the garage.

There in front of me through the pouring rain I could see the picture of how I felt about the circumstances of my life at that point.  My lawnmower was sitting on a trailer, where it had been for two weeks, with a flat tire and the grass grown up around it.  I had planned to take it to the shop because it had stopped running and needed several things done but had not been able to find the time to get it there.  I had gone by the shop with it once, but it was temporarily closed at the time.  Such has been my timing lately.

It hit me so hard that I snapped a picture of it.

Then I ran through the rain to my car to get back down to the church.  Feeling sorry for myself, nearly in tears, I took the thumb drive out and placed in the computer.  I went through the screens to make sure they worked and stopped when I saw a video playing. It was a video of the song “All My Hope” by Crowder and Tauren Wells.  Wow.  The words to the song:

I’ve been held by the Savior

I’ve felt fire from above

I’ve been down to the river

I ain’t the same, a prodigal returned

All my hope is in Jesus

Thank God that yesterday’s gone

All my sins are forgiven

I’ve been washed by the blood

I’m no stranger to the prison

I’ve worn shackles and chains

But I’ve been freed and forgiven

And I’m not going back, I’ll never be the same

That’s why I sing

All my hope is in Jesus

Thank God my yesterday’s gone

All my sins are forgiven

I’ve been washed by the blood

There’s a kind of thing that just breaks a man

Break him down to his knees

God, I’ve been broken more than a time or two

Yes, Lord then He picked me up and showed me

What it means to be a man

Come on and sing

All my hope is in Jesus

Thank God my yesterday’s gone

All my sins are forgiven

I’ve been washed by the blood

Now the tears came flooding. I realized that my hope isn’t in all the things that had gone wrong over the past couple of weeks.  ALL my hope is in Jesus.  Everything else pales in comparison.  Oh, next year will be different at Run at the Mill.  We’ll find another pastor.  It will stop raining.  My lawnmower will get repaired.  Things are already looking up because my taxes were done by the time I sat down to write this.  I thank God that, not only that my hope IS in Jesus, but that He sees fit to shove that fact right in my face when I need I need it most.  Praise God for His grace and mercy!

Dean Thompson