The Expectation of God’s Blessing
We have a divine father who loves to bless us.
Gondor and I hiking up St. Mary’s Glacier. Photo taken by my wife.
My rescue dog, Gondor, loves hiking more than he loves anything else on God’s green earth (except for my wife). Watching him bounding through a foot of snow in the mountains, you get the sense that there’s never been a happier dog in the history of the world.
He’s also very anxious, and scared of most things. Especially the vet. A couple of weeks ago, my wife had to take him to the vet. After that, he decided that he did not like being in the car anymore.
So this past Sunday, we bundled him into the car so we could go for a hike. We were going to St. Mary’s Glacier, which is not only a beautiful hike, it also had plenty of snow for him to bound around in.
And he was panicked. He didn’t have a clue where we were going; all he knew was that the last time he had gotten in our car, he had ended up at the vet and had hated it. He was literally drooling with terror the entire drive up to St. Mary’s Glacier.
My wife and I tried everything to ease his fear. Among hundreds of other statements, one thing I said stuck with me: “Buddy, if you knew where we were going you wouldn’t be so scared.”
As soon as I said it, I wondered: how often does God think that same thing about us? I know you’re frightened right now, but if you knew where I was taking you, you wouldn’t be terrified; instead, you would be over-the-moon thrilled.
This has certainly been true in my own life. When I was working a corporate job, a new boss came in who was a nightmare. Like Gondor, I was panicked. But that boss turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me: God used him to get me out of a soul-sucking job and to start building my dream career as a freelance author instead.
A couple of years later, I fell into what some theologians call a Dark Night of the Soul. I was in the phase of life that, to borrow C.S. Lewis’ phrase, “hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense.” Again, like Gondor, I was panicked. But I was not being taken to the vet; I was being taken to the mountains, and while it took some time, that experience turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.
I don’t mean to imply that as Christians we’ll never suffer. Jesus warns us that we’ll have troubles. But we also worship a loving God, whose delight is to dote on us and to bless us.
What if we assumed, next time that we’re panicked or we feel like we’re in a situation where the walls are collapsing around us, that that’s what He’s doing?
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