Sometimes our
biggest blessings can come out of our times of waiting. That is a very hard concept for me to grasp
sometimes. We live in such an instant
gratification world. Hungry? Don’t worry
about waiting for something to cook, grab any of millions of prepackaged
snacks. Lost? In 5 seconds on your
cellphone you can pull up directions to where you are going. Wanting a brand new car? Why wait to save up money to pay cash when
you can finance everything from cars to Christmas presents, as long as you can
afford the monthly payment, that’s all we tend to care about.
It seems like
the more advances we make in technology, the harder it gets to wait for
things. Not only do we not want to wait,
we feel like we need to be entertained every step of the way if we do have to
wait. Our longevity wanes when things
aren’t fun or engaging. As a school
teacher I saw this every single day from my students. If the subject is hard (and for a lot of
students especially when I taught math this was every subject) and they are not
being entertained throughout the whole lesson, they disengage. Even churches lose membership if they don’t
have the coolest rock band style worship and most dynamic speaker.
It is so hard,
even as an adult, to not want things to be easy and even fun. That’s our comfort zone as humans. If we can just go on auto-pilot and not have
to think too hard, we feel like life is good.
However, sometimes when we feel comfortable we start feeling like we are
the ones in control. We can get prideful
feeling like maybe we are better than others who are going through hard
times. We can also fall into a trap of
depending on ourselves rather than God.
I know I often find my relationship with God gets a little lax during
those comfortable times. Maybe I don’t
study the Bible as much or pray as often if things are going well.
Sometimes we
treat God as if he were a vending machine.
We approach him with our prayers when we need or want something, but if
we don’t need anything we often allow ourselves to get busy with other things
and not focus on him. Just like a vending machine, we put in our payment (the "I need ..." prayer), then expect to immediately receive what we prayed for. I find myself even
doing that. When I am in a really
difficult season, it is easy to “pray without ceasing”. However, during the comfortable, easy seasons
of life, prayers often become hollow and out of obligation.
The Bible refers
to God as our heavenly father. As a
parent myself it would break my heart if my children only spent time with me
when they wanted something from me. I
want to be a part of every facet of their lives. I love hearing about all the exciting and fun
things going on in their lives, as well as the struggles they are going
through. I believe God is the same way
with us. He wants to hear about our
joyous times, and our depressing times.
It warms his heart to see us smile and to hear us say thank you. He also feels our pain when things aren’t
going right.
As a parent,
when your child is learning to walk you have to allow them to fall to develop
their muscles to get back up again. God, as our heavenly parent, sometimes
allows us to “fall” by going through times of trials to help us develop our
muscles of trust and endurance in him. He sees us struggle and get
frustrated, but he resists the urge at times to immediately lift us out of our
struggles because he knows how important the lessons we will learn in those
struggles are to our growth as Christians.
As hard as it is to admit in the midst of a discouraging or hard time,
in my experiences, once I have gotten through the trial I can see what a
blessing it was. We have to remember
during difficult times that we see only what is directly in front and behind
us. God is all-knowing, he not only sees
in front and behind; he sees all of eternity.
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