Lessons...

You wonder sometimes,  don't you, if God is really in control?  I know in my head the sovereignty of God, but my gut gets knotted up sometimes.  Not as much as it used to.  Early in our lives together, Carl expressed frustration with his job by telling me he was quitting.  No more ministry.  Too hard.  Too frustrating.  Can't do it.  I'm going to do something else.  I quit.  I would then panic and start trying to figure out how I could go to work...you know...insurance and all that kind of stuff.  Couldn't nurse those babies forever.  At some point we had to put food on the table.

But then, the next day, he loved his job, and my guts would unravel and we would go about our business for a bit, until he quit again.  I was not a quick learner.  It took me almost a year to figure this one out.  I said, certainly to myself and perhaps to Carl, I'll panic when he shows me the pink slip.

I'm much better about trusting God.  Jesus instruction "Do not worry" is one I do pretty well.  Some things you can control and some things you cannot.  But I still forget.  I can still periodically waste a whole day fretting about people or actions that might happen/shouldn't happen, and I get all knotted up inside and I wonder why God hasn't fixed everything and...well you get the picture.  I beat God up and I beat myself up.

So it happened this week.  No really good reason.  No particularly significant threat.  But the knots began to multiply and the frustration bubbled up and a whole day was spent angsting over the apparent lack of God's sovereignty in the world.

And all throughout the day, God taught me lessons.  Faith and contentment oozed out of the people I saw and talked to, people who really had reason to be knotted up.  And then, nothing I was worried about happened.  Nothing.

It could have happened.  And if it had, I would have still been blessed.  But it didn't.  And I wasted a whole day living in fear and anger.

While waiting for the Messiah, the world's situation was grim.  God certainly could have come in and wiped enemies with a blood bath.  There could have been a list of winners and losers.  We could have celebrated in the streets, knowing our enemies would suffer, knowing we had triumphed!  But there would still be losers, still be tears, still be someone with knots in their gut.

Instead, God came as an infant.  God grew into a man who reached out to enemies.  God died at the hands of those whose guts were so knotted they thought that crucifixion was their only option.  God spoke a resounding NO to death and sin through the life of a man who knew how to trust God with no knots.

I think the great gift of Christmas is the moment of love that washes over us when we experience the Baby.  For a moment, all of us, on whatever side, in whatever circumstance, celebrate the birth of a baby.  And there's nothing that unknots your gut like holding a newborn.  Period.

I have been reminded, again, that God is sovereign.  God is at work and no human brokenness will ultimately prevail.  We will still live in mess for awhile.  Unfortunately, God is still shaping us and we, the world of humanity, are not yet shaped as we need to be.

But I listened.  And I pledge to work (with God's help) for that world in which we respond to each other the same way we respond to the infant Christ by living in ways that respond to people in the same way I would respond to that baby.  It won't always work.  I won't always succeed. It may cost me.  It cost Jesus his life.  But ultimately, God is and will be at work.

And that is where and how I choose to live.