I'm sure you've heard the term, "the highways of life," and if you've ever lived in a big city, near a big city, or traveled through a big city via their highway system, you know that not every interchange is a simple exit from one roadway to the next. Sometimes the exit/entrance ramp loops around, over, and/or under the converging highway. It can be confusing, and you're not always sure you made it onto the right road.
Life can be like that - not every change is a simple glide from one season to the next. Sometimes the new road doesn't feel right. Surely we've taken a wrong turn. We're on the wrong road.This is just too different. The sun is on the left now, glaring through the driver side window. The terrain is unfamiliar too - sand and cactus instead of oaks and lush green grass. You want to turn around and get back on the other highway. The familiar one. The comfortable one.
The thing is we don't always choose which highway to get on next. Sometimes, especially as we get older, we're forced into change by the decisions of others - such as our children moving out and/or away or circumstances beyond our control - such as our parents or spouse or even our child dying. We really don't like this new thoroughfare. We want to go back - sometimes desperately.
And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28 ESV
Someone asked me the other day to think of the worst sin I committed before the age of twenty. That was easy. Then he asked, "Is it still affecting you today?" My immediate thought was to say of course not, but I paused . . . yes, it does affect me. It's made me a more compassionate, less judgmental person. The question has continued to plague me . . . it played a major role in how I mothered my teenagers (hopefully for the better). It brought me to my knees. It opened my eyes to my own brokenness, my fallibility, my weakness. It has been a huge part of who I am today.
It was sin that I chose. It was sin committed against me. Yet God has used it for good. God used it to change me, to affect me, to deepen my relationship with Him.
I've recently taken another exit/entrance ramp onto a road not of my choosing: my daughter, son-in-law, and grand babies have moved seventeen hours northwest of us. They'd been a part of our everyday life even though they lived two hours away. This time the road wasn't my choice. I don't like this road. It's uncomfortable. Unfamiliar. Too quiet. There's not enough play time, not enough opportunities for me to be silly and sing crazy old songs or songs that I just made up because my grand daughter wanted to hear a song about the zoo or about a grasshopper or anything else that came to her sweet little brain.
But if God can take my sin and sin committed against me and use it in such a way that it reaches this far down the road and into the lives of my children and perhaps affect how they parent and thus reaches into the lives of my grandchildren, can I even doubt that He won't take this new season, this altogether different highway with its unfamiliar terrain that I don't like and use it for good?
I want to be angry at my daughter and son-in-law for moving away, for forcing me onto this hateful road, but that's just my emotions. The truth that I know deep down in my soul, when I elbow my way past my emotions, is that my life is His. He has things for me to see, to experience, to do, people to meet that I couldn't have seen, experienced, done, or met on the old highway - He has plans to work even this - this highway, this path, this thing I didn't ask for, didn't want, and don't like - for good.
He's just that kind of God.
Life can be like that - not every change is a simple glide from one season to the next. Sometimes the new road doesn't feel right. Surely we've taken a wrong turn. We're on the wrong road.This is just too different. The sun is on the left now, glaring through the driver side window. The terrain is unfamiliar too - sand and cactus instead of oaks and lush green grass. You want to turn around and get back on the other highway. The familiar one. The comfortable one.
The thing is we don't always choose which highway to get on next. Sometimes, especially as we get older, we're forced into change by the decisions of others - such as our children moving out and/or away or circumstances beyond our control - such as our parents or spouse or even our child dying. We really don't like this new thoroughfare. We want to go back - sometimes desperately.
And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose. Romans 8:28 ESV
Someone asked me the other day to think of the worst sin I committed before the age of twenty. That was easy. Then he asked, "Is it still affecting you today?" My immediate thought was to say of course not, but I paused . . . yes, it does affect me. It's made me a more compassionate, less judgmental person. The question has continued to plague me . . . it played a major role in how I mothered my teenagers (hopefully for the better). It brought me to my knees. It opened my eyes to my own brokenness, my fallibility, my weakness. It has been a huge part of who I am today.
It was sin that I chose. It was sin committed against me. Yet God has used it for good. God used it to change me, to affect me, to deepen my relationship with Him.
I've recently taken another exit/entrance ramp onto a road not of my choosing: my daughter, son-in-law, and grand babies have moved seventeen hours northwest of us. They'd been a part of our everyday life even though they lived two hours away. This time the road wasn't my choice. I don't like this road. It's uncomfortable. Unfamiliar. Too quiet. There's not enough play time, not enough opportunities for me to be silly and sing crazy old songs or songs that I just made up because my grand daughter wanted to hear a song about the zoo or about a grasshopper or anything else that came to her sweet little brain.
But if God can take my sin and sin committed against me and use it in such a way that it reaches this far down the road and into the lives of my children and perhaps affect how they parent and thus reaches into the lives of my grandchildren, can I even doubt that He won't take this new season, this altogether different highway with its unfamiliar terrain that I don't like and use it for good?
I want to be angry at my daughter and son-in-law for moving away, for forcing me onto this hateful road, but that's just my emotions. The truth that I know deep down in my soul, when I elbow my way past my emotions, is that my life is His. He has things for me to see, to experience, to do, people to meet that I couldn't have seen, experienced, done, or met on the old highway - He has plans to work even this - this highway, this path, this thing I didn't ask for, didn't want, and don't like - for good.
He's just that kind of God.
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