From Groans To Glory

Romans 8b Don’t Sweat It

- Read Romans 8:12-30

One section of Romans 8 in my Bible is titled, “From Groans to Glory” I believe that is a fitting title for this message.

Look there again please at verse 20.

- Read Romans 8:20-21

These verses say that all of creation is suffering, is struggling. Think about it.

Every bug around here, is looking over it’s shoulder, afraid some lizard, or frog, or chicken is sneaking up on it. Every lizard, frog, and chicken, is looking over it’s shoulder, afraid some snake, or hawk, or cat or dog is sneaking up on it.

Every morning the gazelle in Africa think to themselves, “Today I have to be faster than the fastest lion out here or I’m going to be somebody’s supper.” And every lion wakes up thinking, “Today I’ve got to be faster than the slowest zebra out here or I’m going to go hungry.” And the water buffalo can’t remember the last time it went to get a drink, that he wasn’t afraid there was something under the water waiting to eat him.

Yesterday morning I came down to move a trailer so Marc and the praise team could come in and practice. While hooking up the trailer I stuck my knee in an ant bed. They bit my knee. My foot, my hands.

But think about them. Here lately, every time they build a nest, it rains and their nest gets flooded out. So, they build their nests higher above ground and Dennis comes along and mows the top off of it. The ants look at one another and think, “Not again. Will I ever be able to quit rebuilding this thing?”. All of creation is suffering. Heaven knows we are.

I worked on a couple of roofs this week. On one of them I had to carry several sheets of plywood, some rolls of roofing, and several buckets of roof coating up a ladder. It’s not quite as easy as it used to be.

To tell you the truth, this getting old is for the birds. I’m not enjoying it very much. I can’t quite do what I used to do, nor as quickly, nor for as long. I went to a garage sale a while back. There was an older gentleman who was selling his tools. I bought a number of them. He sat on a chair in the corner of his garage. It looked like he was clearing things out getting ready to move in with his daughter who was running the sale. It’s heart breaking when a man has to sell his tools. Young folks have no idea what I’m talking about.

When I got home yesterday, I had to spend some time snaking the drains on my house. We’ve been having some plumbing issues, I have an uncle coming into town today, and staying with us, and everything needs to be working right. When I got through running the snake and such, I asked Gladys where she wanted me to take off those dirty clothes. She said, “How about on the porch, so I can shake the sand out of them and such before I launder them. I said, “Ok. Go around and unlock the back door and I’ll do it on the back porch. Daniel may drive by to feed the hog. I don’t want him to feel better about his belly and chest because he saw mine. I’m a minister for crying out loud. The last thing I want to do is encourage someone.

Sometimes it’s disheartening when we see these tents we live in getting a bit thread bare and sagging with a tear here and there. As tough as it is watching ourselves breaking down, it’s even worse to have to watch those we love and care about breaking down and being helpless to help. Ya’ll’ve been there. You know what I’m talking about.

Then you look at what is happening in our country, with our elected officials lying about it. The other day I came back from the grocery store, walked in the door with a couple of bags in one hand and told Gladys, “This was $75.”

In China, entire people groups are being forced into labor camps. Christian persecution is increasing in parts of India, China, Pakistan and other countries. Russia is kidnapping children and entire families from Ukraine and forcibly relocating them to Russia to repopulate their dying country. Japan, China and other countries are now incentivizing their people to have children to help support their aging citizenry, and yet their birth rate is below the level necessary to replace their populations. We’re not stealing children or kidnapping families, but let’s be honest; the birthrate in the United States is 16% below what is necessary to replace our aging population. If it were not for immigration, the population of our country would be decreasing as well. Sadly, many of those moving into our country do not share our culture, nor do they embrace many of the Christian principles on which this nation was built, so things are changing here. But we can’t blame all of this on others. Much of this we have done to ourselves. Men playing women’s sports and using women’s restrooms? No 10 Commandments in our schools, but you can discuss gender changes?