Just Thinkin'...

You know how your mind wanders sometimes and you wonder how in the world you got there? Well, I had one of those moments today. Somehow I was remembering back to middle school age where I learned the great art of debate. We had to draw two slips of paper, one was the topic, and then when the topics were paired up, we had to figure out if we had the pro or con. I was pro-abortion.

Now you have to keep in mind that abortion wasn’t legal when I was this age, but it was a hot topic in current events. You also have to know that I was in a parochial school, so the concept of pro-abortion was as foreign to me as anything could possibly be.

[I need to digress here, since my mind did the same thing at the time. The only thing I knew for sure about abortion was my grandfather’s reaction to the topic. I was with them alone this one particular evening when the news came on. I never knew my grandfather even had a Bible so close to his chair, to say nothing about where he had it hid, but quick as a wink, he was on his feet with that Bible in his hands, ranting and raving around the living room about what an abomination the country was coming to talking about such things. (I must come by my passion naturally!)]

Back to the debate. I won that argument (and never participating in another debate). I learned that whether you believe in something or not, you can argue it and influence others. Any potential career in law faded in my eyes, as I realized it wasn’t the law, but the giftedness of the presenter that won.

But today I thought about that class. Did my adolescent arguments impact any of my classmates? I hoped not. (I assume others have vivid memories of their earlier years and have been influenced by them.) And where did all this back-flashing come from? Then I realized that someone from class that day needed prayer, and that even if I didn’t know who or why, I lifted them all up to God. I don’t know who of those people I’ll see in heaven…but I know at least one of them needed prayer today.

I have to reflect on how God lays people on my heart sometimes. Sometimes it’s just sitting around thinkin’….