waiting
I wrote a post about delays the other week. It was one of those little divine appointments with God and although it still stands out, sometimes the lesson that God uses delays to suit His purposes gets lost in the day-to-day of living this life in "exile" and I forget that.
It's like with the basement. There was delay after delay, and now, almost a month later, the pile of stuff still sits on my lawn. I'm nowhere near closer to getting a new windshield for my truck, and there's yet another delay in getting started. I'm in no particular hurry for the basement to be done, but I do need to get this stuff off my lawn. I got the paperwork from the mortgage company on Tuesday but it's going to take the contractor until Saturday to prepare the paperwork I need from him. Then I have to mail it back to the bank, then I have to wait for a check. I'm thinking another three weeks. I may be knocking snow off this stuff before its gone, all because the money to pay for a dumpster is tied into the big check for doing the demo and rebuild of the basement.
I'm impatient. Even after all this time, even after kidding myself into thinking I have the patience of Job, I'm always wanting to do things on my time, not someone else's, and sometimes, not even God's.
It's a real struggle. I have faith that God will do what He says, but it doesn't happen fast enough for me and I want to fix it myself. So I start looking at ways to do that and in that little exercise, the lessons of what happens when I do that start to become lost.
The most recent one would be the flood. I wanted to do something God didn't want me to do, so the flood came. You'd think I'd learn, but sometimes the little circumstances get too much for me to bear and I start contriving ways to get out of them.
And then I remember....
Yeah, not so much.
Today, I was reminded that God is Holy and I'm a sinner. There's always going to be that divide and I should be trying to make it smaller, not larger. And if I truly believe (and I do) that God has allowed these circumstances in my life to further His purposes (even though I perceive it to be at my expense) then I'm not going to have very much success in going my own way. So far, everything has turned out to be a blessing, so the things I was going to do today, I'm just going to abandon for now. It's good to have the knowledge of things that I've acquired, but I understand how electricity is made and I don't go out trying to make it. Knowledge is good to have. Acting on that knowledge, however, is not always necessary.
So I'm back to waiting and seeing. The basement thing will resolve itself in due time. So will everything else.
It's like with the basement. There was delay after delay, and now, almost a month later, the pile of stuff still sits on my lawn. I'm nowhere near closer to getting a new windshield for my truck, and there's yet another delay in getting started. I'm in no particular hurry for the basement to be done, but I do need to get this stuff off my lawn. I got the paperwork from the mortgage company on Tuesday but it's going to take the contractor until Saturday to prepare the paperwork I need from him. Then I have to mail it back to the bank, then I have to wait for a check. I'm thinking another three weeks. I may be knocking snow off this stuff before its gone, all because the money to pay for a dumpster is tied into the big check for doing the demo and rebuild of the basement.
I'm impatient. Even after all this time, even after kidding myself into thinking I have the patience of Job, I'm always wanting to do things on my time, not someone else's, and sometimes, not even God's.
It's a real struggle. I have faith that God will do what He says, but it doesn't happen fast enough for me and I want to fix it myself. So I start looking at ways to do that and in that little exercise, the lessons of what happens when I do that start to become lost.
The most recent one would be the flood. I wanted to do something God didn't want me to do, so the flood came. You'd think I'd learn, but sometimes the little circumstances get too much for me to bear and I start contriving ways to get out of them.
And then I remember....
Yeah, not so much.
Today, I was reminded that God is Holy and I'm a sinner. There's always going to be that divide and I should be trying to make it smaller, not larger. And if I truly believe (and I do) that God has allowed these circumstances in my life to further His purposes (even though I perceive it to be at my expense) then I'm not going to have very much success in going my own way. So far, everything has turned out to be a blessing, so the things I was going to do today, I'm just going to abandon for now. It's good to have the knowledge of things that I've acquired, but I understand how electricity is made and I don't go out trying to make it. Knowledge is good to have. Acting on that knowledge, however, is not always necessary.
So I'm back to waiting and seeing. The basement thing will resolve itself in due time. So will everything else.
Comments
Post a Comment