The Lord frustrates our plans, shatters our purposes, lets us see the wreck of all our hopes, and whispers to us, “It’s not your work I wanted, but you. You cannot be anything if you want to be everything.
~Solomon Schechter (1847-1915)
Then Job answered the Lord and said: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me.’ I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
~ Job, a blameless man, in Job 42
There are days beloved. There are those days when we absolutely flow with His generosity and simply love.
And then there are other days.
The days when we look at what we cannot have, and cannot take our eyes of it.
The days when the first thing out of our mouths (because the first thing we think) is: I want…
The days when people are not noticing the love (well… that is what we call it) we are pouring out in their direction.
The days when what we want to do simply does not even enter into the equation.
The days when we become willing to even change how we think about someone simply because they will not do what we want.
The days when we look only at our problems. This, rather than to the Solution.
Yeah, there are these kind of days. And they are some of the very best days we can have.
What?
Can we see it? Frustration and egocentricity are an excellent tripwire indicator that we are moving out of the space of abiding with Him. It is like an onboard spiritual alarm that He has put into us.
So, when we don’t get what we want, almost surely we need to be going back to the root of the issue altogether. Our desires are irrelevant. That day when we gave Him everything meant that we were also giving up our rights to even find fulfillment from anything or any person other than the Person of Jesus Christ.
Yeah, there are those days when we forget. And they are wonderful. For they cause fools like this writer to turn around and run back into his Daddy’s arms like i am some kid who just fell down and skinned his knee.
And yeah, even more so it is true that there is One who does not forget. For He is really strong. He is really big. He is REALLY Loving. And, He most definitely cares about our problems more than we do.
Would that we might all rejoice when we are frustrated. Would that we might sing His praises when we do not get what we want on those days. For, in the getting, we might actually be more injured than the sting we feel when our fleshly lusts are not fed.
And in the rejoicing might we see there is this TREMENDOUSLY compassionate Being who is just waiting to give us the desires of the new heart He has created in us. We have absolutely no need to meet our own needs. We have only but to give Him all of our puny little selves, and He has promised to meet – and even exceed – any expectation we could ever generate on our own.
Anxiety springs from the desire that things should happen as we wish rather than as God wills.
~Saint Francis of Sales (1567-1622)
