Exodus 14-15
THE OPERA AIN'T OVER...’TIL THE FAT LADY SINGS. It was a banner hung over the wall near the 40-yard line of Texas Stadium. The guys in silver and blue were struggling to stay in the race for the playoffs. So some Cowboy fan, to offer down-home encouragement, had splashed those words on a king-size bedsheet for all America to read. It was his way of saying, "We're hangin' in there, baby. Don't count us out."
Sure is easy to jump to conclusions, isn't it? People who study trends make it their business to manufacture out of their imaginations the proposed (and "inevitable") end result. Pollsters do that too. After sampling three per cent of our country (or at least they say that's what it equates to), vast and stunning statistics are announced.
Every once in a while it's helpful to remember times when those preening prognosticators wound up with egg on their faces. Like when Truman beat Dewey, and England didn't surrender, and the Communists didn't take over America by 1975.
Yes, at many a turn we have all been tempted to jump to "obvious" conclusions, only to be surprised by a strange curve thrown our way. God is good at that.
Can you recall a few biblical examples?
Like when a young boy, armed with only a sling and a stone, whipped a giant over nine feet tall. Or the time an Egyptian army approaching fast saw the sea open up and the Hebrews walk across. Or how about that dead-end street at Golgotha miraculously opening up at an empty tomb three days later?
Anybody—and I mean anybody—near enough to have witnessed any one of those predicaments would certainly have said, "Curtains...the opera is over!"
Unless I miss my guess, a lot of you who are reading this page are backed up against circumstances that seem to spell THE END. Pretty well finished. Apparently over. Your adversary would love for you to assume the worst, to heave a sigh and resign yourself to the depressed feelings that accompany defeat, failure, maximum resentment, and minimum faith.
But take heart. When God is involved, anything can happen. The One who directed David's stone and opened that sea and brought His Son back from the dead takes delight in the incredible.
In other words, don't manufacture conclusions. There are dozens of fat ladies waiting in the wings. And believe me, the opera ain't over!
God delights in mixing up the odds as He alters the obvious and bypasses the inevitable.
---
Excerpted from Day by Day with Charles Swindoll, Copyright © 2000 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. (Thomas Nelson Publishers). All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission.