I spend a lot more time alone in the car than I used to. It’s pretty weird after years and years of kids pouring into and out of our old Chevy van everywhere I went.
So quiet.
But I’m learning to make new uses of the time.
It’s a great time to pray for all those kids who aren’t in the car with me anymore.
It’s a great time to memorize verses, especially after discovering ScriptureTyper, thanks to Barb’s recommendation in our New Year’s Day post. After I’ve recorded a passage, I can play it over and over and over, stamping it onto my brain and into my heart.
And I’m finally learning how to download sermons onto my phone so I can listen to those while I drive!
I took this lesson away from one of the last sermons I listened to:
When we’re going through trials — little ones and giant-sized ones — we need to stay focused on who sent the trials, not on who or what brought the trials. God is the One who sends the trials. Nothing gets past Him. If we’re going through a trial, it’s because God sent it. It’s for our good. It’s for His glory.
When the UPS man leaves a package on the doorstep, and we open it to find a lovely gift from a faraway friend, does our thanks go to the delivery man or to the one who lovingly sent the gift? The delivery man is simply the means our friend employed to get the gift to us. The trying people and circumstances that come into our lives are the means God employs to send us the bittersweet gift of trials — trials that will hurt, but trials that will help us grow and cling to Him.
He may send the trial via your husband’s boss who lays him off of work.
He may deliver trials through:
a cranky child,
a season of illness,
a broken-down car,
a leaky roof,
a gossiping “friend”,
a frustrating day of homeschooling,
a rebellious teenager,
an indifferent husband.
God is incredibly creative as He molds and shapes us into His Son’s image. These people, these circumstances are simply the delivery service God employs for sending us trials, for testing our hearts and strengthening our trust in Him.
We need to keep our eyes on Him. If we can just remember that God loves us, that He is in the business of changing us, that He can see the whole picture while we can’t, and that He is right there at our side, it just might make it easier to keep our eyes on Him while we respond to the trials — and the trial deliverers — that He sends.
“… So it was not you who sent me here, but God.” (Joseph to his brothers, Genesis 45:8)
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