Being the pencil...

Something is happening upstream. No, I don’t know what. I don’t even know for sure whether something is actually happening, but I have His word that it is…and His word counts for pretty much. As Pea so aptly put it on her blog: People ask me what’s going on, and I want to tell them to ask You, because I don’t know – I am watching and waiting, just like they are.

See, God and I have been having a series of conversations recently, revolving mostly around control. As in, who is in control of my life? It’s not that I disagree with the fact that He ought to be; it’s just that practically, it seems a rather unworkable and vague arrangement. Half the time I’m busy working my own way, the other half trying to help Him along with His. As history has often showed me, that doesn’t work. It all fell apart. Well, not all – just the part I was holding.

I’ve been reading Andy Murray’s “Absolute Surrender”. Here’s a passage: God has created the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the flowers, and the trees, and the grass; and are they not all absolutely surrendered to God? Do they not allow God to work in them just what He pleases? When God clothes the lily with its beauty, is it not yielded up, surrendered, given over to God as He works in it its beauty? And God's redeemed children, oh, can you think that God can work His work if there is only half or a part of the surrendered? God cannot do it.

Ah, surrender. Does that mean I no longer call the shots? Apparently, yes. And I guess I just haven’t been ready to let ‘mystery’ (or faith, if you’re more spiritually inclined) take the place of good old logic. I think that’s why it fell apart. The part I was holding. It was a bit of a set-back, before I realized I’d been trying to drive my own vehicle – makes sense, right? That I would be my driver? He doesn’t agree, obviously.

He says He knows the best path way for my life (even mockingly suggests: How can a man understand the road he travels?), and it serves me better to let Him handle it. All of it. Even the smallest things like whether to go climb a mountain or spend the money on credit. Nothing vague about that. He’s in charge, I’m the pencil that’s fully yielded to the sharpening and the writings of its master. You don’t hear the pencil complaining, saying I’m tired of writing, let me cook instead. You see now why this is so hard, being a pencil.

Anyway, we are coming to agreement on a few fundamentals, Him and me. It’s made me realize how much better things can be. He gives simple instructions take a few steps into the Jordan, and wait, and I follow them, and wait. It all comes down, really, to trusting that He knows what He’s doing. Not asking too much, considering He’s been around since…the beginning of time.

How do I know something is happening upstream, and the raging waters will soon stop flowing and there will be dry ground to walk on? Even though I can’t see Him doing anything, and am I not almost drowning? How do I still know? Why, because He said so! I’m just the pencil.