It seems to me that all of us walk around with a specific burden. This burden? It is the responsibility we think that we have to cause our lives to run in a way that would be perfect or as wonderful as we have always dreamed.
This burden becomes really heavy when our dreams end up unfulfilled. This life can take so many unexpected turns, turns which can break our hope for tomorrow. We so often fail at what we have worked so hard for.
These realities accompany us continuously.
When pain and tragedy happen in our lives, we often and frequently ask the question: Where is God? We usually don’t ask this question when things are going well. I guess that without tragedy and pain, we can imagine God being part of our lives. God is good, right? We associate good things with Him. When bad things happen we feel that He must have left us, or might be quietly watching while we suffer.
So many of us have experienced broken relationships with our parents so when God says that He is our Father … how can we relate? When something bad happens to us, we immediately think that we cannot trust God. We think of Him as an untrustworthy parent. This causes more pain just by the mere thought of having a relationship with a Father you cannot count on, one who will make mistakes. Humans make mistakes, and this is our reference.
Definition of a relationship: The way in which two people or things are connected.
(Cambridge English Dictionary)
Parenting involves this undeterminable and inexplicable love between parent and child. Something you can’t alter or change, a Godly force – I believe. The way you act, or react towards this love is still up to you, but the force exists and we cannot change that.
This force, I believe, is what God wants us to refer to when He says that He is our Father. God is not human and therefore does not act or react in our nature. He is the Perfect Father.
In our relationships with our earthly fathers we can, to a certain extent, understand and sometimes predict their parenting decisions. Many times we do not agree with these decisions. The disagreement does not result in a change in the connection between the father and the child, but it can alter the relationship (the way of connection) between the two.
What is the way of connection between you and your Heavenly Father? Are you connected in such a way that you have established trust in who He really is? Are you connected to trust His decisions for your life? Are you connected to understand that in prayer conversation He really hears your heart? Are you connected to know He is intimately connected with you, even though He will not give you every heart’s desire immediately. He is a good father. He is the Maker of Heaven and Earth.
In our spiritual lives we might have been expected to trust Someone whom we do not know. When given the freedom to get to know this remarkable God we serve, something changes. We grant ourselves permission to build the relationship, to see the process through. We make an honest effort to grow towards His being and heart. Showing our honest selves to Him is where freedom in the relationship begins.
Then I realize: God could have prevented my tragedy, but He didn’t.
Then I realize: He sees my whole life picture, and I do not.
Then I realize: He is a loving compassionate father, and not fazed by my tantrums.
Then I realize: Tomorrow something beautiful may happen, which I never could have dreamed up.
Then I realize: He REALLY will NEVER leave me, that He is the shade at my right hand
… then even the scared little girl in me says:
EVERYTHING WILL BE OK
Written by Johanni Meiring
Johanni Meiring 