God’s Teachable Moments

*5-10-14  I’m sitting outside on my red chair overlooking the golf course.  If the maintenance guy would stop driving by in his noisy cart spraying or whatever he’s doing it would be more pleasant than it is.  Beautiful morning.  I shamed/guilted Bill into going for bagels.  I had such a craving.  I’ve already messed up the Suduko.  I dropped 2 lbs. since yesterday.  159.5 to 157.5.  I’ll ride 6 miles today to work off my bagel.  Then I’ll write.  That’s my plan.

I was thinking about abandonment – the theme of my life.  Emotional.  Physical.  Am I/have I abandoned myself somehow.  As a child I didn’t want to be singled out for ridicule so I tried to be invisible.  Now I’m frustrated because I feel sometimes like I don’t exist.  How to change that?  Do I want to?  Because you may then open yourself up to ridicule again.  Is it better to be ignored?  Better to be rejected?  I don’t ask because I don’t want to hear no, but  if you don’t ask you don’t get anything either.  God, I’m ready for some more blessings.  Please send them my way and help me to recognize them when you do!

God’s probably thinking I ignore Him and His blessings.  Think how often He is rejected!  Think how often people abandon their faith in Him.  Is this His teachable moment for me?  Thank you God.  That’s a blessing.

If you looked at every aspect of your life as one of God’s teachable moments it would/should change your perspective.  Isn’t that what this life is about?  Creating perfection through fire?  Melting us, molding us, bring us closer to Him.

Think of a blacksmith holding iron over fire.  What if you were the metal feeling the heat of that fire – the pain you go through in life.  Then the blacksmith pulls the iron out of the fire and pounds on it.  Wham!  Wham!  Wham!  What if the iron felt every blow just as you feel every life blow, every set-back, every rejection, every loss, every heartache.  Wham!  Wham!  Wham!

But all the while the blacksmith is shaping that piece of iron into something beautiful and perfect.  Just like God is (trying) to shape us.  Every minute of every day He exposes us to one of His teachable moments sometimes with a WHAM, sometimes with a gentle tap.  As the iron maybe we are given a choice – to allow that blacksmith to mold us into something of perfection and beauty.  Or maybe we can twist ourselves into a shape of our own making preferring instead the company of the scrap heap.

God can pound the selfishness, the ego, the cruelty, the “it’s all about me” attitude out of us if we let him.  But fire and a master blacksmith can only do so much against a will of iron that has control of its choices.

*From my morning journaling, unedited.

#God #teachable moments