The Other 167

Not all of our blessings from God come in the package that we wanted. Sometimes they feel like that trick you might have seen at Christmas, where you get a big box and open it to find a smaller box, and repeat until you finally get a very small gift in the end, but it's the best present. A lot of blessings come from things not going the way we hoped, or maybe even from a disaster or heartbreak. I don't know why God does it this way. I have plenty of theories, but His ways are higher than our ways. And that's really all that matters.

The world is full of things to distract us. People, circumstances, health, even blessings often come between us and our relationship with the Lord. And that's just in the present. One of our favorite pastimes is imagining what might come our way in the future. We are distracted by things that haven't even happened and may never happen. What's the point? If you nail down that God can and will do what is right, all that is left is to trust Him and enjoy His love and grace while you wait to see what He does next.

I've always read Psalm 51:6 and thought it meant God wants us to be honest with Him. And maybe that is what it means. But I read the second half of the verse this week and saw something I hadn't thought of before: "....and in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom."  Sometimes the hard part is being honest with yourself. I don't have a hard time telling God what I think is the truth. I have a hard time knowing if what I am telling Him really is the truth.  I've never told God anything He didn't already know. But He's told me a LOT that I didn't know. Maybe this verse is as much about letting God be honest with us as it is about us being honest with Him. 

It's easy to get a little motion sick along the twists and turns of life. But God is unshakable. His love, grace and faithfulness to His children doesn't fluctuate with circumstances of the day. And that's what He wants for us.  While we cannot control our circumstances, the fallen world we live in, or even our own sinful nature entirely, we can trust it all to Him and grow to share more of His nature, including the gift to be unshaken by the day to day ebb and flow of life. 

One of the hardest parts things to do as a Christian is aligning our priorities with our beliefs. We believe Jesus is the most important thing. We believe He knows what's best and will always do what is best. But we like to add two more words to that sentence, and they wreck the entire thing: "for me". What's best "for me" may not be what's best for Jesus. And how we respond when those don't line up shows who really comes first in our lives.