Only eight years old playing Barbie's with her sister, but she already had her life planned out for the next 12 years. As she braided long blond Barbie hair she was weaving ideas of her idealisitc future.
She would be
married by the time she was twenty, live in a house with prince charming and raise
a family happily ever after. It had all seemed so realistic back then.
After all if
you plan things right and live a good Christian life you can get what you want,
right?
“Know that wisdom is like honey for you:
If you find it, there is a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off...
For the evil man has no future hope,
and the lamp of the
wicked will be snuffed out.”
~ Proverbs 24:14 and 20
That ideal
was fading as she graduated from high school ten years later.
The thought
of being married at 20 had lost its appeal.
But she was
not a heroine to be easily disheartened. The story of her life was just
beginning and the hope of the impending summer and the beginning of college
fueled her fantasies of what her life would become within the next four years.
She could put behind her mistakes she’d made in the last four years and become
the girl she wanted to be in the next four.
“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
The details
of those plans were still unknown to her. When the next four years of college
turned into the next 6 years of college her heroic spirit was enduring moments
of discouragement.
The college
graduating class of 2011 seemed to taunt her with their cap and gown pictures
on Facebook. The day of her best friend’s wedding had passed with a tang of
bitter sweetness.
The world
was spinning and big hand on the clock in her living room was ticking round
without her.
But she was
strong.
The bumps
and detours in the road had not extinguished the flame of hope she held on to.
As she lay
in her bed at night and stared out the open window at the glittering stars she
would pray to God and thank Him for the life He had blessed her with, but
sometimes she forgot.
No, that’s a
lie, she didn’t forget to pray.
Sometimes
she didn’t pray on purpose and instead was consumed with her hope and dreams.
She was discouraged because things didn’t pan out the way she had anticipated.
She wasn’t
getting what she wanted and it confused her. She was a good Christian. She went
to church every week and read her Bible so why wasn’t God rewarding her?
Like
everything in life, if you work hard and follow the steps to success you’ll end
up on the top…well that’s
what she used to think. As she stared into the infinity of the stars, the awe of God's power and control overwhelmed her and reminded her that life is not about the material success you enjoy. Perspective makes a world of difference and the right perspective was enough to fuel her optimism. Whatever opportunities God decided to give her in life, she would relish and she would do her best to leave the steering up to Him.
"So we do not lose
heart.
Though our outer self
is wasting away,
our inner self is
being renewed day by day.
For this light
momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all
comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that
are unseen.
For the things that
are seen are transient,
but the things that
are unseen are eternal.”
~2 Corinthians 4:16-18
You don’t
have to get what you want.
Sometimes
what you want changes,
sometimes it
stays the same,
sometimes
you do get what you want,
sometimes
you enjoy it,
sometimes
you regret it.
"If in Christ
we have hope in this
life only,
we are of all people
most to be pitied.”
~1 Corinthians 15:19
We, the
believers in Christ, have the most reason to hope. Being a Christian doesn’t
mean that things go our way if we follow all of the rules. It means we can look
past the disappointments of this life and find hope in the promises of Christ.
I don’t know
why things work out the way they do.
All I know
is that you can’t manipulate God into doing what you want him to do. You can’t
even truly know what you want sometimes. The comfort is that God knows what you
need and he knows when to give it to you. Be flexible, be willing, and be
hopeful because
He has a plan.
“For in this hope we
were saved.
Now hope that is seen
is not hope.
For who hopes for what he sees?
But if we hope for
what we do not see,
we wait for it with
patience.”
~Romans 8:24-25
Oddly I was driving to work today thinking about karma and how easily we allow the idea of it to crawl into the Christian culture. Maybe not exactly what you were getting at, but certainly prevalent in our subconscious Christian dogma that karma works, or God is a great big Genie in the sky who will bend his will to our pleas.
ReplyDeleteKarma tells us that if we do good things we will receive good things. If we work hard we will prosper. But you’ve put your finger on it, Jana. Life doesn’t really work that way. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes we work hard and get fired or laid off anyway. God doesn’t promise us that we will have an easy life on Earth, only that he has good plans for us. It doesn’t feel very good sometimes, but we believe in a God who knows what we need better than we do.
Clearly karma doesn’t really define our lives here. The bad things that happen often don’t seem to fit into the design of a loving God’s plan in our minds. Even so, I’m sure God uses these events for our gentle correction, (sometimes in my case the less subtle bonk on the head) to point us in the proper direction. While I’m pretty sure the Rolling Stones didn’t have this in mind, they might closer to the truth than they knew singing, “You can’t always get what you want, but if look sometime you just might find, you get what you need.”
Thank you God for knowing what I really need!
Keep the hope Jana. I know God has great things in store for you.