You can't rush God...

My mom copied this quote from her church's prayer email and gave me a copy:

"You can't rush God. You can't dictate how things tend to be, or how they will turn out. From our perspective nothing may be happening or working, but from God's viewpoint a lot of things are coming together. We need to trust Him and let Him do what He knows is good for us." - Melinda Clements

From time to time, I reflect on what's going on in my life. More often though, I tend to fume about what I perceive to be the lack of "progress" toward my hopes and what I feel I deserve. As I think about the experiences I've had over the past few years, one common theme I notice is a very slow progression towards letting go of anxiousness and a glimmering flicker of real faith in God.

I wrote that at the beginning of November, apparently I'm still working on it. My mom asked me about the quote today - did I have it written down anywhere. By chance, I remembered this post and thought I would "finish" it.

This past Thursday, a member of my men's group brought in a notecard he had made for Maltbie Davenport Babcock, whose only claim to fame is as the author of the lyrics for the hymn "This is My Father's World". On the backside of this "baseball card" was a section of the lyrics - the third verse I believe:

                This is my Father's world.
                O let me ne'er forget
                that though the wrong seems oft so strong,
                God is the ruler yet.

He also had a verse from 2 Corinthians. I didn't catch the chapter/verse but I think that chapter 4 verses 8-18 go well with the hymn as a whole, and verse 18 would probably fit nicely on a notecard:

"So we don't look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever."(NLT)

What's the point of all of this? I need to do a better job of letting things go and not getting so bent out of shape when things don't go my way. I still haven't heard back about that job in Charlotte and I probably never will, but maybe that's not the point. At different points in my life, I've read in the Psalms for comfort and inspiration. Many start out with the angst and frustration I sometimes feel, but they also finish by turning to praise God at the end - acknowledging that God has been faithful in the past, and will be faithful again.

Do I often write about my feelings of frustration? Yes. Is it complaining? I don't know, sometimes I worry it is. However, I feel a certain sense of comfort as I read the Psalms and know that I'm not the only one who has felt as I do. I do need to remember to turn at the end, and acknowledge that God is "here" - even when it doesn't feel like it.

At some point, things will work out. Until they do, all I can do is keep praying and practice faith.