132: everything else is optional

How did I miss all these years that life's not fair?

When you get what you want for so long, you kinda gloss over other people's lives. Well, God will get them through it. He has a plan.

By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down, yea, we wept, When we remembered Zion.

I think about the Jews exiled in Babylon--righteous men and women longing so hard for their homeland where they belonged by God's design, but where they could not live because of national sin. (I recently read a novel about Esther--book review forthcoming!)

I think of the believers in Africa and the Middle East who can't even live in peace because of the constant threat of attack from Yahweh-hating Muslims. I take for granted that a basic right of my life is to be able to live it freely, without fear of other people.

I have assumptions--things I take for granted should naturally come with life. Like liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Like marriage, children, a home of one's own.* When those assumptions are contradicted, however minutely, in my own life, I find myself up at after 11 pm on a school night, sobbing into my pillow, telling/asking/reminding God over and over that It's Not Fair.

We all know our life's purpose is to glorify God. Knowing it and feeling it are two different things. I assume that I will get to glorify God AND have xyz for my personal pleasure. But like Job, life can turn an absolute mess (which it hasn't for me) and every desire be denied (which it hasn't for me) and every dream be cut off (er, getting a little close to home there), and, strangely, our lives can still have purpose.

I can see the amazing witness for Christ believers can have who are running from town to town for survival, their families being slaughtered. I think, "That is horrible," but I don't feel the unfairness personally.

It's harder then to look at my own life and see this little thing go wrong and that dream denied and be willing to say, "Lord, as long as I glorify You..." Because that would mean giving up my assumptions about fairness and what life should look like--in reality, not theoretically--so I can accept the higher purpose of God.

I'm more like the child whose parents are trying to gently take away his toy. I don't want to let go. I was given this, it's mine, why on earth do you think you can take this away? Nothing is better than this. I don't want anything else. No, I don't trust You.

Oh God, have mercy on this foolish, emotion-blinded soul.

What would it be like to have the faith and love to say, "Lord, everything else is optional, as long as I glorify You"?


*These posts lately are not so much about singleness but just wrestling with how to have an active faith in God that will apply to all the variations of life.