Daily Prayer, 9 April

I can’t say if it is a growing trend, but it is certainly very common that the young men and women I counsel often tend to think that a change of scenery will solve all their problems. “If I could just get out of here.” It is a product of self-centered thinking that looks to oneself last when trying to find the cause of one’s difficulty. The world should work, so if it doesn’t work for me it must be broken. Without a healthy understanding of sin and man’s fallen nature we are unlikely to conclude that it is our brokenness that is the source of most of our difficulties. It’s a tough lesson for anyone, but especially with young people, many of whom are unacquainted with failure. We have to teach people to make space in their life for failure, and that they have within them the knowledge and strength to overcome that imposter. Because we were not made for failure, but for eternal communion with our everlasting Father. We all have problems and difficulties, but in the Risen Christ we have all of the solutions, even if we can’t see them now.

Wilmer McLean had had enough of war. A retired major in the Virginia militia, he was too old at 47 to return to active duty anyway, so when war broke out he remained a grocer. McLean made a good living selling sugar to the Confederate Army. He lived with his family a little north of Richmond on the farm he owned, called the Yorkshire Plantation. It was in the little, pastoral town of Manassas, overlooking a nearby stream named Bull Run.

The war found him on July 21, 1961 when two great armies converged on his farm and engaged in the first major combat of the Civil War. His home, being used as a headquarters by Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard was struck by Union artillery—blowing up his kitchen. So he moved.

After the battle he took his family 120 miles southeast, to the other side of the Confederate capitol where he could keep them safe from the war, yet still do business with the government. Surely, all of the fighting would be done between the two capitols and wouldn’t last very long anyway. In any event, who could imagine great armies fighting over the dusty old crossroads near the tiny village in which he now lived, noteworthy only because it was the county seat of a rural county called Appomattox.

Three and a half years later, however, the war caught up to him. General Robert E. Lee’s Army, fleeing its trenches around Richmond, was caught by General Grant and the Union army just outside of Appomattox Courthouse, forcing their surrender.

It was in Wilmer McLean’s home on April 9, 1865 that Generals Lee signed the formal articles of surrender, effectively ending the Civil War. McLain could truthfully claim that the Civil war began in his kitchen and ended in his front parlor.

Often we think that if we could just move, go somewhere else, then we wouldn’t have any more problems, or at least things would get better. When we think this way, however, we forget that we bring most of our own problems with us, and like Wilmer McLean walk from one battlefield right into another, just as unprepared to fight as we were before.

We have to learn to fix what we can now, where we are now. Even if it’s only small things and even if it doesn’t seem to help much, there are problems to be solved here. Until we begin figuring out how to solve our problems, they will continue to find us no matter where we are. Don’t let them get into your kitchen.

LET US PRAY

Heavenly Father, sometimes we think like Jonah that we can run away from or hide from the difficulties that we encounter in our life. We avoid tasks that are difficult, we avoid conversations that are uncomfortable, we bide our time and try to escape rather than grapple with the problems at hand. Lord, teach us that wherever we are, wherever we go, whatever difficulties we might face that You are right there beside us the whole way, even when it feels like we’re alone. Teach us to lean on Your mighty arm for the strength we need to fix the problems that confront us here today, and everywhere always, for You, Almighty God, are our strength, our shield, and our savior, and it is in Your name that we pray.

AMEN