So this morning I read today's online Streams in the Desert and found it apropos. To wit: I've been feeling really beaten up by life lately, and today's reading addresses the issue.

The writer, A. B. Simpson, starts with this literal translation of II Corinthians 12:10: "Therefore I take pleasure in being without strength, in insults, in being pinched, in being chased about, in being cooped up in a corner for Christ's sake; for when I am without strength, then am I dynamite."

Bingo.

I then looked up the Amplified version of the verse, in context. Check it out here.

Paul was writing about how he'd had some amazing revelations and how God had then sent something into his life to "rack and buffet and harass" him to keep him from being "excessively exalted."

Regarding my own case, I thought, of course! Things have been going quite well, thank you, on quite a number of fronts and my default mode (the default mode for all of us?) is to get complacent and lazy and sloppy and vain. So God brings stuff (not-too-nice stuff, downright crazy-making stuff) along to keep me (us?) out of that mode.

It's simple, obvious, basic--Christian Life 101. But being who I am, it's a lesson I have to learn over and over and over and over and over.

And OVER!

So as the penny dropped this morning, it was like having, as it were, bicarbonate of soda dropped in the sizzling, broiling acid of my soul.

A sense of calm ensued.