It’s very easy to get caught up trying to figure out life or figure out why certain things happen and other things don’t. All of us have our own agendas, wishes and desires and we all hope and pray that God’s will for us includes all of those. When that doesn’t happen, we usually get frustrated and oftentimes ask “Why?!?”.
What we fail to recognize is, can God truly answer that question for us? We would need to tap into his all-knowing and all-seeing presence to see how that disappointing event for us affects others (or affects us positively down the road). Sure, we want to know a simple answer as to why we were “let down” but the answer would way over our heads.
In one of the Gospels, Jesus teaches his disciples to be like Children. This has many different applications, but there’s one in particular I want to focus on. As a parent of a toddler, I’ve had the opportunity to see my daughters’ life from a parent’s perspective. As a child, she is completely innocent and thinks/acts in simple (childish) terms. She is totally trusting of her Mom and Dad, but she also has her own agenda (starting to sound familiar). There have been many occasions where what we, as parents, wanted for her was far better for her than what she may have wanted at that same time. As her parents, we know so much more about what’s important and we can see and understand things that she cannot.
Our situation with God is identical to this, albeit frustrating. God, as the parent, sees everything and provides for us what we need and when we need it…in His own way. As our Father, His choices for us will always be wiser and better for the overall health of our souls than what we may decide that is. Since, in this case, we are the children, we need to work on recognizing that we don’t know everything (like children sometimes believe they do) and that we should trust in our Father who knows what’s truly best for us.
life awake 