I have come to understand that there are many things in life I will never understand. But that does not stop me from trying.
When things are not going well, I try to retrace my steps and see where I took a wrong turn. Once in one of my backward walks, I heard God's Gentle Voice.
He said, 'Do you really think you are going to find the way out of this maze by wasting your time in going back? Or do you want to go forward and let Me guide you out?"
The first commandment was we are to have no other god before God. We often think of other gods as idols. We don't think we could be putting ourselves before God.
When we try to figure things out on our own instead of trusting God to guide us, we are putting ourselves in first place.
When we pray, often our prayers are all about our will and how we would like God to line up with us. Very rarely do we simply come to Him with thanksgiving that He has The Plan and that He is inside us working out that Plan.
Acknowledging God is God and we are not comes down to trust. Do we really believe God can be trusted to always work for our good? This can be hard when things look bad and we don't understand.
Many times I have told God if He would just explain what He is up to and what The Plan is, I could better cope with things.
But He does not do that. In spite of our trying to figure Him out, God does not explain Himself through the events of Life.
We will never understand Him if we look at Him through what is happening to us or those around us. We only begin to understand Him when we trust Him enough to get close and let Him show us Who He is.
Then we can begin to understand Who He is in us and through us.
We can start with the basics.
God is Love.
He has loved us with an Everlasting Love that began before He gave us a human body and will last long after we no longer live in this human body.
He does indeed have a Plan for all His Creations and specifically for us.
He is working everything together for our good.
His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. They are higher and better than we can think or imagine.
When we try to figure out what to do next, He tells us. "Trust Me."
I do not have the answers to my many "why" questions. I do not know how I got to where I am. I do not know where I am going next.
All my carefully made plans seem for nothing. I am not even sure what the next minute will bring. I feel like I am at the edge of the high diving board, about to be pushed off.
Yet somehow I feel at Peace, a kind of Peace that is telling all the butterflies in my stomach to be patient. They will soon be freed.
I see myself not being pushed, but courageously stepping off that diving board into the air. At first I feel the rush of wind pulling against me. But as I fall, instead of gravity pulling me down, I seem to be getting lighter.
It is then I realize I am falling upward, not down. I am flying like the eagles. God is with me, holding me up, His Spirit literally being the wind beneath my wings.
I tell Him, "I don't understand."
He is quiet. He does not explain. He smiles. We fly until we land, wherever that might be.
"For I know the plans I have for you," declares The Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
Jeremiah 29:11
"For My Thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My Ways,"
declares the Lord.
"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My Ways higher than your ways and My Thoughts than your thoughts."
Isaiah 55:8-9
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