Last night our dishwasher sprang a leak and the kitchen floor was filmed with water. I attempted to shut the water supply off under the sink, but the valve had calcified and it was immoveable. I attempted to control the situation by spraying it with WD 40. I thought it was loosening and applied more pressure with a spanner. The shaft of the valve sheared right off and water started spraying under the sink. I dashed for the main water supply and shut it off. But it too has calcified and all my efforts reduced the water to a trickle that I cannot remedy. Many times events have spiralled out of my control. Sometimes the outcome was pleasant, and at other times beyond belief catastrophic.
In an idle moment, renowned National Geographic photographer Pete McBride, lounging on a couch, suggested to journalist Kevin Fedarko that they do a thru-hike of the Grand Canyon. “It will be a walk in the park” he maintained. Thru-hiking the Grand Canyon is daunting even to veteran hikers and requires intensive planning and massive support with food caches at strategic points. It is not for the faint hearted. Fortunately the thru-hiking community saw through their amateur status and stepped up in support. Even so, Fedarko came to this conclusion, that is applicable to all of life:
“Sooner or later, every difficult journey collides against a moment that crystallizes the imperative of accepting that the outcome of any ambitious undertaking can neither be ordained nor engineered by its participants, and that the heart of an odyssey is reached-and its deeper truths begin to reveal themselves—only after the illusion of control is permitted to fall away and disappear into the gathering night, like a loose pebble over a cliff.”
Kevin Fedarko. “A Walk in the Park”.
Searching for God is an unimaginably daunting and ambitious undertaking. God says of Himself, “I am the high and holy One who Inhabits eternity.” “Holy” in the Bible means other-than, God is “different” to mortal flesh and blood. That is, he is outside of space and time. Where all our scientific data end, that is where He dwells. To know Him requires handing Him control, or, to state the obvious, trusting Him. Some are content with a shallow self indulgent search and abandon the journey at the first obstacles.
Read the sentence again.
“. . . the imperative of accepting that the outcome of any ambitious undertaking can neither be ordained nor engineered by its participants, and that the heart of an odyssey is reached-and its deeper truths begin to reveal themselves.”
Job discovered this – he lost everything, property, livestock, family, and finally his health. He searches for God to hold Him accountable for all this suffering. And finally God shows up and reveals His Highness and His Holiness: This new perspective brings Job to confess, “I had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you.” The ocean depths have been little explored because of the difficulties involved. God has depths that no mortal can fathom, no equipment is available and His purposes go beyond our understanding.
What shall we do?
1 Peter 5:6-7: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”.
“The proper time” is not something we like to hear. Yet to reach the deeper truths, we must give up control, “casting all our care on Him.”
Soldiers who suffered together have a special bond that only they understand and share between themselves. God suffers too and draws into just such a special bond. Every tear that humans have shed formed in God’s eye first. Suffering takes us to a special place in God’s suffering heart.
“Proper time” has another dimension – the other dimension involves your exaltation. Trust changes the perspective of suffering from self-pity to contentment.
The other dimension is an exalted view of God, and exalted experience of God, an exalted place in eternity with God.
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