By: Liza Catron
All Rights Reserved 2011
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PUBLISHED BY: Liza Catron
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“In The Twinkling Of An Eye”:
A glimpse of the rapture
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Copyright © 2011 by Liza Catron
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Graphic courtesy: T. J. Catron
Copyright © 2011 by and for Liza Catron with T. J. Catron
License Notes
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“In the Twinkling of an Eye”
A glimpse of the rapture
In August of 2010 I lost a very dear friend to suicide. The death of this friend totally and completely devastated me. For months I had spent hours on the phone with him; listening to his problems and trying to encourage him wherever and whenever I could. We talked about his problems, his cares and concerns; we read and discussed various scriptures together and often discussed the fact that we felt sustained solely by our faith.
Then one evening, after not being able to reach him, I learned via a very public forum, that my friend had been found dead in his home. I couldn’t believe it, it simply wasn’t possible. The talk was suicide. There was no way on earth that my friend would have done such a thing. Conversations with various people over the next few weeks would show me just how severely depressed my friend was and the loss would show me how small I was in the big picture; and how no matter how hard I tried, I could not save him.
In September 2010 I was in such great distress with things that were going on in my life. I was being torn apart with personal family issues that were driving me crazy. Some were so overwhelming that I felt that things were simply impossible. Was my faith going to be tested as well? Having had a falling-out with family members I felt alone in the world with the exception of my children and husband. Although they were my life, the familial issues seemed to be so vast I began to think about my friend in another way. I never felt like suicide was an option but I began to see why he had chosen that path, I actually understood his choice. Sometimes when we are so very overwhelmed we tend to forget that the One that can help us with everything is as close as the skin on our own bodies; and yet sometimes we just cannot see Him.
When one accepts Jesus Christ as their personal Savior and begins to walk in the Word of God, we are like a newborn baby; one that can only partake of sustenance via suckle. As we grow in the Word and Teachings of God, we begin to partake of a diet of mush, and then very softened vegetables, and then a little consistency is added and then a little more and a little more until we begin to partake of ‘adult’ food. As we continue to feed on this sustenance (The Bible) we continue to grow in the Word of God. If we fail to partake of the necessary sustenance to survive it will not be long before we find that we begin to suffer malnutrition. For instance, failure to include vitamin ‘c’ in our diets causes a disease known as scurvy, failure to include vitamin ‘d’ causes rickets, and each vitamin known to us has a beneficial quality that causes each of us to include that particular vitamin in our diet or suffer the consequences. The same, yet opposite, is done with the things we know are not healthy for us; as adults we begin to cut them out of our diets.
However, if we partake of God’s Word and incorporate it’s teaching into our lives in every aspect of our day, we begin to grow in the same fashion as a newborn baby. We are born as newborns, become toddlers, grammar, junior high, high school, college students and then adults. With each stage of our growth more is given of our Heavenly Father to feed our earthly bodies so that we not only grow in His word but are able to tell others of the amazing and glorious gifts of our Heavenly Father and Savior Jesus Christ.
God blesses each and every one of us individually and with specialized gifts, designed and created just for us. Some of us are piano players, some teachers, others preachers. Some of us fight the gifts of our Lord so hard for so long that we deprive ourselves of blessings that God has for us for many years. Sometimes we learn without stern discipline and begin to grow with leaps and bounds in the Word of God; sometimes God has to slap us upside the head to make us wake up and realize that something He has laid on our hearts is no longer a request, but as a Christian, becomes more of a demand/commandment. If we listen and embrace his gift we continue to grow, if we refuse to listen we find out that slap can cause quite the heartache.