I feel peace about everything that has happened in my life the last couple of weeks. What that peace means exactly, I don’t know, other than the fact that I know that God is in control. That’s what truly matters. I’m not in control. I don’t want to be in control. Because every time, every single time, I try to get in control of something, I totally mess it up somehow. At the very least, it doesn’t turn out as magnificent and awesome as it would have if I had left it wholly to God. Despite this knowledge, self, however, still has different plans, and tries to be in control.
That is, I feel from my current perspective, something that has happened recently and impacted my walk with Him. Despite my best efforts, (notice, my best efforts…) I messed things up. I tried to help God. The important lesson I learned here is that I allowed a gift from God to come between God and myself. I tried to keep focused on God and to let Him be in control. But ultimately I failed and tried to do so under my own strength. Do I know that this is the end of a chapter in my life? No. Do I know how that story ends? Nope as well. All that I know for sure is how much God has changed me over the course of the last year.
So, maybe that was the result, it’s just possible that in order for me to allow God to do some of the things He needed to do in my life, He needed to focus my attention for a while. I don’t know. But, I, as a human, certainly can’t begin to try to figure God out. Our task in life isn’t to understand everything that happens, or even everything that God puts on our path. But we do have to trust Him. Sometimes that’s just incredibly much harder than other times, you know?
The hardest part about all this, though, is truly learning what God shows us, and holding on to it. It’s so easy to move through a step of life,” saying “oh, that was cool” and forgetting it. Rather, when God shows us something awesome, or reveals something to our hearts about ourselves, about Him, about others, or about the world around us, we need to internalize that fact, to learn from it, to use it as a building block to bring us one step closer to Him.
Something that I’ve been learning recently more than ever, is the love of Jesus and the grace of our Heavenly Father. Love from God’s perspective is so much more complicated than love from our human perspective. And so much more difficult. Love that rebukes, love that challenges, love that scolds, but at the same time, love that endures, that supports, and that draws close. It’s very difficult getting disciplined. And very humbling. But at the same time, it’s very awe-ful to think of the tremendous, intimate love our Savior has for us, to the point that rather than leave us to our desires and faults, He is willing to reprimand us if necessary, to draw us back to Him, and to take that kind of effort in out lives individually. And, at the same time, He doesn’t take any crap from us. Of all the times I’ve whined to Him about not moving fast enough or not getting my way, He never budges. We may try to take shortcuts to get what we think we want. But it is extremely hollow and shallow when we are allowed to achieve our goals apart from Him. And besides, just like Morgan Freeman said in the movie Bruce Almighty, “Yeah, but since when does anyone know what they want?”