God's Blessings in Troubled Times

I don't normally blog on Tuesdays, but I feel compelled to write my thoughts this morning.

I woke up at 5:20AM and wondered why the furnace was running and I was so hot. I turned on the downstairs hallway light and the further down the stairs I walked the colder the air felt. I headed to the thermostat and immediately saw the problem. The basement door was wide open and the screen door was also propped open! I immediately thought hubby must have been painting in the basement and forgot to shut the doors. But then I knew that I would have felt the cold the night before and I had been in the basement to do laundry and everything was locked and secure. As I walked back toward the family room, I saw pictures on the floor and thought the cats must have done it...probably spooked by something. No! Our flat screen TV was missing. I quickly scouted the area and noticed nothing else that seemed to be missing. My office was intact; my purse intact and all my computer stuff...fine. I hurried upstairs and woke up hubby and told him we'd been robbed. We came downstairs and couldn't figure out how anyone could have come in through the door. It had two slide bolts as well as a regular lock. Nothing was disturbed. The door hadn't been removed from the hinges.

I went upstairs and saw the entry point. Someone had come on our deck, removed a bug screen from one half of the window (inside the deck), and then had gone outside, used our ladder and climbed up to lift the window screen and the window. They came in through that half window area and went downstairs to get the TV. As we investigated the path, we realized they had snipped the alarm wire on the door they used to exit. Not too smart of a crook, because if we had actually set the alarm before retiring, that would have broken the circuit and set off the alarm.

Anyway, we are out one 42" flat screen television, but no one in our home was injured. Nothing else was taken.

I truly believe God was watching over us. It could have been so much worse. In today's world, we might have been killed. If we had woken up and caught them in the act, who knows what might have happened.

I also believe God is giving us a wake-up call. We have safety measures on our windows to keep them from opening. We have locks, and the kitchen window was unlocked. We have an alarm system and we hadn't set it. From now on, we are utilizing all our safety measures, and we are thanking God for the blessing in the violation.

God is good, all the time.