If you read the last post, you will have read about a good friend of mine. A few weeks ago he lost his bus privileges, so now I drive him to school in the mornings and pick him up in the afternoons. Since we started this daily ritual, I have yet to fail him. I show up on time. Always. What's funny about the mornings is that he is more worried about me getting there on time than he is about me dropping him off on time. We spend the drive singing songs and talking about what he wants out of his day. It is a wonderful way for me to start my day and I imagine it is the same for him. I show up at his house at 7:18 to pick him up at 7:20. I usually wake up at 7:00 and head on over.
This morning, I woke to my phone ringing. It was 6:59. When I looked to see who the perpetrator was, I saw that it was my friend.(The one I ride with.) Annoyed, I crawled, prematurely, out of bed just in time to hear my alarm start. After turning it off, I looked to my phone to see that he was calling again. I knew it wasn't an emergency. He has this thing that he does where he worries about little things that he has no reason to worry about, so I naturally assumed that this was just one of those moments. Eighteen minutes, and seven calls later, I pulled into his driveway. After two minutes, he came trotting out to my car with a smile that would wake any sleeping college kid. Best drive yet.
What I found in this made me feel like a child.
God has never, ever, given me any reason to doubt his faithfulness. He has always showed up. Every time. But I still spend most of my prayer time worrying about his presence in my life.
It's those times that I am worried about something that my prayers increase in number. It is also, more often than not, in these times that I feel like he's ignoring me. I am beginning to see why.
"Do not worry about your life... Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?"
-Jesus(Matt Ch. 6)
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Will
Sometimes I act as if God's will is exclusively about action. (It is God's will for me to: go here, do this, be that, marry her, bomb them.) Lately I have been learning that sometimes it seems to be about inaction as much as it is about action. Kind of like how a song is as much about the spaces between the notes as the notes themselves.
I can think of many examples, but one stands with prominence in my mind. Yesterday I was driving to church with one of my best friends, and we drove past a nasty road kill. It was the nastiest one I have ever seen. There was a huge, mutilated deer in the road with a one hundred yard trail of blood and guts leading up to it. It was fresh. My friend, who is squeamish, nearly threw up. On the way home I had forgotten about the deer and happened to see it before my friend did. As we approached it, I pointed out his window, towards the sky, and in an excited voice told him to "Look at that!" We passed the deer, and he turned to me disappointed because his eyes were not able to locate the object of my excitement. He also didn't see the deer.
It only makes since to me that God the father would protect us. This must mean that sometimes he has to distract us from what is going to make us "sick." I am guilty of looking for meaning in everything I see, so this kind of sucks for me sometimes. I get sent somewhere and am constantly looking for my purpose there.
What if my purpose for being here is not being there?
I don't want to meet and fall in love with my wife yet. I'm not ready for that.
I won't ever understand God's will. I won't ever understand some of the things he leads me to do or to not do. But that's why it's God's will and not mine. I take comfort in the fact that his plan is bigger than my understanding. The best I can do is to trust that he has a pretty good reason for pointing out the window. I trust him enough to daily ask him to do the pointing.
I can think of many examples, but one stands with prominence in my mind. Yesterday I was driving to church with one of my best friends, and we drove past a nasty road kill. It was the nastiest one I have ever seen. There was a huge, mutilated deer in the road with a one hundred yard trail of blood and guts leading up to it. It was fresh. My friend, who is squeamish, nearly threw up. On the way home I had forgotten about the deer and happened to see it before my friend did. As we approached it, I pointed out his window, towards the sky, and in an excited voice told him to "Look at that!" We passed the deer, and he turned to me disappointed because his eyes were not able to locate the object of my excitement. He also didn't see the deer.
It only makes since to me that God the father would protect us. This must mean that sometimes he has to distract us from what is going to make us "sick." I am guilty of looking for meaning in everything I see, so this kind of sucks for me sometimes. I get sent somewhere and am constantly looking for my purpose there.
What if my purpose for being here is not being there?
I don't want to meet and fall in love with my wife yet. I'm not ready for that.
I won't ever understand God's will. I won't ever understand some of the things he leads me to do or to not do. But that's why it's God's will and not mine. I take comfort in the fact that his plan is bigger than my understanding. The best I can do is to trust that he has a pretty good reason for pointing out the window. I trust him enough to daily ask him to do the pointing.
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