Interfaith Celebration Gathering

 

 

God Knows Best

 

Life comes at us fast sometimes, doesn’t it?  Without warning, all sorts of things happen, leaving us to pick up the pieces of our plans, our dreams, and our hearts.

 

This leads some of us to try to control everyone and everything around us, so that we are not shaken up by the vagaries of life.  But when we try to control everything and everyone, we do not leave room for God to be in our lives. And our lives really do work better when God is in control than when we imagine we are in control.

 

Besides, control is an illusion at best.  Just because we think we control the things and people around us does not mean that we actually do control them. It simply means that others are allowing us to have our way because they do not want to have to deal with our bad behavior when we do not get our way.  So who is really controlling whom?

 

The need to control arises in childhood when things in our lives are out of control. We may have a controlling parent, or one with anger issues, or one who is childish, or an alcoholic, or addicted in some other way. Once our controller forms, though, we pretty much push God out of our lives until we work through our trust issues and can trust God with the outcome of our lives.

 

Even when we learn to trust God, though, sometimes it is hard for us to separate out what is our responsibility and what is God’s part.  We are only responsible for the footwork. We are not responsible for the outcome. When we open ourselves to God’s direction for our lives, God will show us what we are supposed to do. Doing our jobs as God has shown them to us is our part – the footwork.

 

Leaving the outcome of our labor to God is the hard part. There is an old 12-step Program saying that describes how hard it is to turn the outcome over to God, “Everything I ever let go of had claw marks all over it.” But we must turn things over to God in order for us to have peace in our lives. And we must turn things over to God in order for the outcomes that are in Divine Right Order to happen.

 

From our limited perspective, we can only see certain facets of any issue. God sees all facets of an issue, and knows how each person involved in an issue needs to be impacted for his or her growth.  So let’s keep on doing the footwork as we are guided to do it and turning over the outcome to God. God knows best what needs to happen.

 

May the God of love add a blessing to these humble words.

AMEN

© 2011 Rev. S. Suzanne Fisher