Do you remember the Brothers Grimm fairy tale about the miller’s
daughter who was commanded by the king to spin straw into gold?
It occurs to me that life often gives us straw in the form
of financial problems, health challenges, relationship difficulties, or life-jarring
grief. A person of faith says, “This is happening to me, so I need to make something
out of it that will encourage other people. I need to spin the straw into gold.
I can’t let it be wasted.”
What about you? Has some straw been delivered to your life? Some
straw you didn’t order? You checked the address to make sure it was correct.
Yep, it was. Must be your straw. What will you do with it? Brood, complain,
whine, blame, despair, stew? Or will you spin some gold?
Tom and I both deal with health challenges—definitely a bale
that we didn’t order. We want to spin this straw into gold, but we are learning
that we can’t do it by ourselves. In the gold-spinning story, someone else—Rumpelstiltskin—did
the actual spinning.
As Christians, we have the Holy Spirit in our lives. If we
choose to have a "spinning" attitude, he will do the actual miracle. He will
produce the gold. He will give us the faith we need to believe that this
challenge will really work to strengthen us…and others.
Paul tells us in Romans 8:28 that “in all things God works for
the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
This seems to me like a straw-into-gold kind of promise—one we can hold on to
no matter what life brings us.
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