“God rules: he brings this one down to his knees, pulls that one up on her feet.” Psalm 75.7
Four trucks, 494 boxes, a four-man crew working hard for two days to unload the stuff! Result; boxes piled up on the yard and in the driveway, tools scattered on every floor, chaos reigns. In the middle of this, my mobile rings with a crisis dour jour. Every problem, every person impacted is important, just not now!
I look around and I see mountains of stress in most people’s lives. Work, significant others, life in general, and friends form a web of stress points that overwhelm even the strongest. There is a common solution to these problems, good friends. In my case, I would put them to work arranging bookshelves, tackling the garage disaster, putting the keyboard and stereo in place, and hanging art. In a new country, in a new city, or at times when friends are part of the problem solutions like this do not always work.
I hear the clich?s starting already! “Just do it”. “Grin and bear it”. “It is for your own good you know?” “God will get you through it”. “With a little discipline…”. “God never gives you a burden that you cannot bear”.
The last clich? always gets to me. 99.9% of the events in my life are the result of a choice I make or a choice that someone else makes that affects me. I acknowledge the reality of “miraculous” events; I just do not believe they are the mainstream of life. The choices you and I make share our lives. So now my question: if I shape my life, or others shape it for me, how is this God’s responsibility? Answer: the particular shape, in the short-term, is not God responsibility.
God is on the lookout for every opportunity to tell us he loves us, accepts us as we are, and we have a gift waiting for us if we want it. God uses everything that happens in life to this end. Life is there, so is God.
