I feel that in the last few weeks, God has given me a truly wonderful present. The last few years, there have been things that I have wished would have happened by now or certain things that I wished had transpired differently. There have been things that I desired that I now see stopped me from truly cherishing the life that I already have.
I often wished that I had made more steps to further my education or was better off financially or had children already or had accomplished this or that. For the most part, there isn’t anything particularly wrong with any of these desires. They are common and understandable enough. I mean unless you have Oprah money, who wouldn’t like to pad their nest egg more and unless you’ve been a career college student with multiple degrees under your belt, who wouldn’t like to learn more in order to be more productive? The problem is that even though there is nothing wrong with those desires, there was something wrong with the hold that they had on me. I realize that the time that I spent looking back caused me to miss blessings that were right in front of me. God seemed to literally open my eyes and I saw things in a totally new aspect.
Now, my Father knows how I am. I like to have facts and see things in writing. Even to justify why I feel a certain way or believe a certain thing, I like to find in writing somewhere that my opinions are actually based on something. I don’t tend to not like or do something without looking into it first.
My Father understands this and gave me this desire for insight and when He opened my eyes to the fact that I was using too much time looking back instead of appreciating where I currently am, He gently urged me to read Ecclesiastes 3:1 NIV ‘There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.’
Now something that I have learned is that God is not partial in anything that He does. When He says there is a time for everything that is exactly what He means. But the thing to remember is that it is God’s timing, not ours. God knows when we need what we need and when we are ready to receive the things that we desire. He knows and only puts on us what we can bear, yes good and bad. We should trust Him and enjoy the gift of now.
This is not to say that plans and goals should not be set. We should always strive to be better and be more productive but not at the cost of wasting the beauty in life that God has already given us.
Thanks to Selena for your 'golden' example!
Thanks to Selena for your 'golden' example!
The song that comes to mind is Jill Scott’s ‘Golden’. Muzikspeak, looks at the lyrics.
