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Editor’s Note: Pastor Scott Peterson is sharing daily devotions written by some of his favorite authors. The author’s biography and any notes by Pastor Scott are listed at the end of the devotion.

Look Again

“I’m of the old school,
and I’m against it!”
She said it with a toss
of her proud gray head,
and I knew the discussion was over.
I wanted to say,
“But, friend, you forget.
School isn’t out yet.
Living is learning,
and learning is living.
It’s sad to see you hunker down
and burrow in like that.
Our world is in trouble;
the good old days weren’t
good enough, SO now we must
re-think what we’ve accepted as true.
Please look again at all you’ve looked
at; there’s more to be and to become.”

Gerhard Frost, 1985

As we live in the midst of constant change, fear is our greatest enemy. The only thing that can conquer this is faith. Fear makes me brittle, and everything brittle or rigid is weak. Faith makes a person pliable and strong.

When I travel on the road I ride on rubber, not on cast iron or even tempered steel Why? Because rubber “accepts” the road. It doesn’t fight the hardness of the road. Its very softness is its strength. It yields under the pounding, and in its yielding saves itself from being torn or broken. Metal would not only rob me of my comfortable ride; it would break itself in a few short miles. It is possible to travel life’s highway, fighting everything that happens. I can spend myself in brittle fear, suspicious of every new thing, refusing to move forward, and trying to remain as I am. This makes me a harried settler rather than a free traveler because when I resist change, I miss the rhythm and flow of living. I fight myself and God

(Frost 1986c).

Gerhard Frost (1909 – 1988) was a Lutheran Pastor, a college and seminary professor, and a poet.  A student and friend of his described him this way, “…beloved by all who knew him. He had a Lincolnesque combination of strength and quietness about him.”  That is an apt description of Gerhard Frost when I met him in 1978.  As a guest speaker, he read his poetry at my internship congregation, Immanuel Lutheran Church, in Wadena, MN.

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Image: Rubber Tire by Sean Weston (Flicker)