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Wednesday, April 6, 2011

This is the stuff

I was driving down the road on Sunday and heard these familiar lyrics "I lost my keys in the great unknown and call me please, 'cuz I can't find my phone" These lyrics rang oh so true to my heart that day. I am routinely losing my keys or my phone or something else I put down for just a moment that seemed to have grown legs and ran off just to tease me. But today, they all happened in the same day and this song touched me at my very core. Saturday night the family went out, my husband drove and so I put my keys in the dash rather than putting them in my purse like I should have. So Sunday morning when I'm leaving for church and my husband has long since gone to the race track, I reach for my keys and get that familiar sickness in my stomach. My keys are in my car. In my dash to be exact. My car is locked. My husband has the only spare. Inside for just a moment I feel the need to scream "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" but I maintained my composure and thought for a moment. My nearly 20 year old son (how is that even possible, that I have a child who is 20, surely I'm not that old), has gone to California so he can't help me. Oh yeah! He rode with someone and I do have a spare to his car, I'll take his car to church. Great! When I got to church, I shared about my minor problem with a friend because I was so thankful that God had already orchestrated the solution to the problem. This friend immediately told me anytime that happened, give them a call, they'd be glad to give me a ride. And I couldn't help but think how wonderful that God always has a back up plan for me. I came home and walked up to the door to find that I had locked the front door. Of course I locked the door. Why wouldn't I lock the door? Unfortunately, my keys are in my locked car still. So I stop and think, ok God, what's your backup plan. Oh yeah, I have a keypad for the garage, i'll just punch in the code and enter through that way. Which I did and it worked wonderfully. I went to the store and saw someone who's battery had died and thought, hey I have jumper cables in the trunk. So I stopped to see if I could help. In no time they were back on the road. I sat realizing, I was just God's backup plan for someone else. And that's when I heard the song. Things like these happen for a reason. These are the little things that drive us absolutely crazy. They aren't major issues in life, they're more like little irritating things that at times can seem to make life unbearable. But these really are the things God uses. These are things God uses to break us of our impatience, our tendancy to get frustrated over the little things, our self centeredness perhaps. These are things God uses to grow us and mold us and also to show us that He always has a solution. He is always there. He is faithful in the little things and He is faithful in the big things. And if we can really get that and understand it, when the big things come, we can rest easy knowing that the King of Kings and Lord of Lords has our best interest at heart and is there with us. He already has a plan in place and He is in complete control. It may not seem like it when we look at it with out human eyes, it may not be what we would chose, but He really does have everything under control. So if you are trusting Him in the little things today, thank God for His faithful presence. And if you are trusting Him in the big things, thank God for his faithful presence. He is there with you and He will see you through and on the other side, you will be a better person, more like His image. And know, this is the stuff he uses. "in the middle of my little mess, I forget how big I'm blessed, this is the stuff that gets under my skin, and I've gotta trust, you know exactly what you're doing, it may not be what I would chose but this is the stuff you use!"