People can choose to believe whatever they want to believe. However, just because you believe a certain thing does not make it so. I could believe that I am the ancient King Tut reincarnated and attempt to get others to believe it too, but that fact is there would be no truth in it and no facts to verify it. Some may say that most or all things good or bad happen for a reason and some may not believe that at all.
As I sit down to write this article for The Wayne Weekly, to meet my deadline for this coming week’s edition which also will become a part of my blog (timstocktonraysofhope.com) my mind has been racing of what to write about. My family at the encouragement of my wife wanted us as a family to read through the entire Bible this year. We were doing good keeping on track back on the “snow days” but as time moved forward and our lives being involved with other things in it did not always get priority. One day missed turned into 22 days missed.
A few weeks ago it was planned by us to attend church with my wife’s sister’s family in Bowling Green. On our drive down we decided to get as much “caught up” as we could with the Bible reading. With all the modern technology we can plug the phone into the vehicle’s speakers and have someone else “usually with an accent” read it to us.
We were in the Gospel of Luke after having completed Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Matthew, and most of Proverbs and some Psalms.
In the Gospel of Luke we heard tell of the great faith of the friends who had a sick friend they let down through the roof to where Jesus was. This was one of the times when Jesus claims His true divinity that He IS GOD.
He does this by telling the sick man that his sins are forgiven first before healing him. The “religious leaders” who heard this were distraught and “reasoned within themselves…who but GOD can forgive sins. Jesus “knowing their thoughts” (yes, He knows what we think) explained the reason He spoke that statement. This leaves only two options to believe; 1. You can believe like the religious leaders and think Jesus is crazy and blasphemous, or 2. You have to agree with Him and believe what He claims about Himself.
As we had listened to this true account of Christ being read on the way to a church that we had not visited for over a year the entire sermon was about this same story; even though the pastor read it from the Gospel of Mark. The definition of a coincidence is, “events that happen at the same or close in time by what some call chance or luck.”
If we had been “on time” reading our one year Bible plan or chose a different day to visit the church it “wouldn’t have worked out.” I choose to believe God “appointed” it to happen which led me to write this article which I believe will be a confirmation for someone else who reads it. As ol’ man Ripley would say, “Believe it, or not.”
~TRS 4/6/25
Rays of Hope 