I’m a one woman Gong Show

There is an ad on TV for a new (old) show that will soon be aired, the Gong Show. I remember its first run back in the 70’s and it is a show better remembered for the outlandish, awful acts that people did than the persons who won a show like the American Idol. What happens is a person or group comes out to perform and if they are awful the host will take a huge mallet and hit a huge gong signaling that their act is over and they have to leave the stage. Seeing that ad gave me the thought of a line in a song that says, “Just when I’d stopped opening doors finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours, making my entrance again with my usual flair sure of my lines, no one was there…” That is a time when you have gone all out to do something you thought was wonderful and then find out it was scorned, or worse than that, ignored. So I kept turning those two thoughts and songs through my brain thinking and wondering if I had accomplished anything in my life that would be notable after my death, or if I had made such a fool of myself that God Himself would just Gong me off the stage!

I imagine that Job, while he sat scraping his sores with broken pieces of pottery, was wondering what it was that he had done that deserved being gonged off the stage of life and onto a dunghill scraping his sores while grieving for the lives of his children and the loss of all his properties. Or if when King David was laying in the ashes wearing his torn garments grieving the death of his son started realizing what he had done to bring this sadness to his life. On the one hand Job had not done anything worthy of judgment, he had lived an exemplary life and God had bragged on him, but David had looked on another man’s wife and wanted her so much that he had sent the man to the front lines of battle knowing that he would be killed and he could have Bathsheba for himself.

OK they both got the Gong, for different reasons, now what about me? What about you?

Have you been so tempted and tossed, (James 1: 6-8 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.  For let not that man suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.) that you don’t know which door to go through and when you finally decide realize you have chosen the wrong one and no one is there to see your performance or give you accolades?

I get embarrassed thinking of some of the dumb things I have done in my lifetime, things that if God were standing at the Gong with the great mallet would definitely have struck it at least three times telling me to get off the stage of life!

Psalm 139: 23 Search me O God and know my heart; try me and know my anxieties.

Ask God to search your heart and see if there is anything in your life that needs to be cleaned up. Pray that you will have the faith you need to live your life honorably in a way that will keep you from being Gonged, believe me, it’s no fun!