Last night, I go to bed. I’ve been fine all day but I suddenly get cold as I pull the covers over me last night and don’t know why. It’s not a real chill though. Just a little bit. It’s no biggie. It’ll pass. This morning though, I wake up and I have the oddest sensation. It is as if a cloud of anxiety hangs over my head and it’s the kind that you have, and some of you know of what I speak, that you can physically feel you think. You cold tell where it is in your head and you swear if you were at a hospital, they could locate it.
I go off to work anyway. I have nothing to be anxious about. It’ll pass. Well, the anxiety did start to go away, but the cold came back with a vengeance. My workplace is the place that air conditioning forgot. If you are cold here, there is something wrong. Many employees buy fans to keep with them simply because they are incredibly hot all the time.
After four hours and a lunch break, I decide I can’t handle it and go on home. A rare event for me, but after some computer duties here, I just go to my room and lie down. I have a book with me and start reading some. I am still in my work uniform, but I end up getting my robe out anyway and putting it on. I am freezing.
Yet I come out here eventually and sit at my computer again and turn on my Wii. I can’t just lie down. I have to do something generally. After awhile though, I realize that I do need to lie down again. Thus, I go and lie down on our couch and still with my work uniform and robe on, I pull a blanket over me. I am still cold. I have turned off the air conditioning here and where I live we have a warm climate, and I am still cold.
It’s times like this that make you think about suffering.
So I do have some momentary anger and wonder for a brief second why God is allowing me to undergo this suffering. Can he not see the pain I am in in this moment? Then I stop and realize. He can, but he can also see the next moment, and the next, and the next, and the next…. My problem is that I am simply looking at one moment of time instead of the big picture.
And that is where the challenge comes in. God tells us in Scripture that in those moments, we need to trust him. We need to see that he is outside of the situation looking in. It doesn’t mean he delights in what is happening now. It does mean though that he knows a way to use it for my good. I have to trust him. Now someone might say “But he’s got an advantage! He can see all moments of time!” That’s right. I can’t. That’s precisely why I have to trust him.
This is one thing I try to remember in my life when something happens. If I think some big screw-up has happened, I simply say “Whatever has happened has happened.” No sense trying to change the past. You can’t do it. You might as well accept it and realize that God will use it for some good. You can learn something from it, but you can’t change it. Spilled milk stays spilled.
So what do I do at this point when I am focusing on this moment? I try to realize that I am missing the big picture. I need to see the whole totality of it. Is it hard? Yep. In our self-centered state we’re usually in, it’s hard to see past the present. It must be done though. He never tells us that trust will be easy. He just tells us to trust.
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