Do you ever feel tempted to play God?  To take over?  To make something happen the way you feel strongly it should happen?  To get involved in the “how” of something that you feel confident in the “what” or “why” of?  You have!?  Want to be best friends?  I am tempted to do this on a regular basis.

I once took a strengths assessment and discovered that one of my greatest strengths is my sense of responsibility.  That sounds good, right?  Don’t you want to have people in your life who have a strong sense of responsibility?  Who won’t bail on you in the middle of something? Who will take ownership over a task? Who will not drop the ball?  Who think ahead and count the cost before committing? That sense of responsibility has served me very well these past 39 years – it helped me get good grades in school, complete my college degree, be a faithful spouse, a devoted mom, a dedicated employee.  It has helped me stay on top of finances and keep the housework from getting completely out of control.  Not a bad strength to have!

So what is lurking on the flipside of the coin of responsibility?  For me, it is a tendency to want to control things that are either beyond my ability to control or exceeding my right to control.  As a responsible mother, I want to raise my son with attention to detail – I don’t want any character issue, health need, spiritual discipline, or mental aptitude to go unnoticed or unattended.  Why? Yes , because I love him, but also because I feel responsible.  The danger comes when I take my responsibility to far.  I stop focusing only on my responsibility to do the right thing in a given situation and, in addition, take on the responsibility for the outcome of the situation as well. 

To be responsible for myself: my actions, attitudes, and words; is a wonderful thing.  To take on the responsibility for anything beyond that is where I start to get into trouble.  

In a scientific research environment, experiments are conducted to arrive at conclusions that can lead to helpful solutions to difficult problems.  Lots and lots of experiments are conducted before the solution is reached.  In order to get the specific desired outcome that they are looking for, scientists isolate all the different variables that could have an effect on the outcome of the experiment.   They do this in a sterile environment where they control every possible variable.  That way when they complete an experiment, they know exactly how and why the result was achieved and they can replicate it. 

My overreaching sense of responsibility would LOVE for life to take place in a controlled, sterile environment.  I don’t know about you, but in the complex world I live in, I can do all the right things and still end up with a result that is riddled with the effects of all the variables I couldn’t control along the way… variables like other people’s actions, attitudes, and words, my own limited understanding and perception, and the effects of an unseen spiritual war that is going on all round me at all times. 

Repeat after me: “I am only in control of myself!  I cannot control any other person on this planet without eventually hurting them.  I cannot control every variable.  I cannot control other people’s priorities or their desires.  I cannot control the outcome of any situation, only my role in it.”

Responsibility is a wonderful attribute, but taking responsibility for things that are clearly God’s responsibility is, at best, setting me up for frustration and, at worst, paving a road that leads to deception and destruction.  I think I need to create a pin board somewhere in my mind for my “Junior God” badge.  Any time I find myself overstepping my bounds, I’ll remind myself to head to that pin board and hang that badge back up where it belongs.  There is no such thing as a Junior God, but there is such a thing as a “dearly love child of God,” and that is the badge I want to wear instead.

How about you?

When our son was a toddler, we learned a nifty parenting trick.  After suffering through meltdown after meltdown whenever it was time to transition from one activity to the next, we discovered that if we gave our son a 5 or 10 minute warning before the transition was about to happen, the meltdowns were a thing of the past.  "Tim, it will be time to help clean up toys and say goodbye in ten minutes."  "Tim, dinner will be in five minutes, so get ready to stop your video." As long as he knew what was coming and when, he could cope.  When he had time to wrap things up or finish on his own terms, he was golden.  If the meltdown wasn't completely averted, it was at least lessened in severity.

Don't you wish we had the luxury of those kinds of warnings in life as adults.  "Carla, in six months you will not be living here any more and you'll have to start over."  "Carla, within the year, that person that you are so attached to will pass away."  "Carla, in the next week someone in your family will become ill."  Just a little warning, wouldn't that be nice?  Just a little heads up so we can wrap our minds around what is coming and finish or adjust on our own terms. 

The thing is, these little advance warnings weren't the most valuable things we could offer our son.  Yes, they made life a little more bearable in the moment, especially as he was making his way through those toddler years, but it was never meant to be a way of life.  After all, we wouldn't always have a warning ourselves.  Sometimes we would need to make a transition with little to no warning and we would need him to trust us and spring into action before his emotions could catch up.  What we really wanted him to learn were things like - Your Mom and Dad love you and we are in charge.  We know what is best and we are working with an agenda that includes more than your immediate happiness, things you just aren't prepared to understand yet.  The more you trust us, the more you will see that we have your best interest at heart.  We may ask you to do some things that you do not want to do, but it is never out of cruelty.  At the end of the day, what we really wanted him to learn to do was to rest in our trustworthiness, and to respond based on our relationship not on an attachment to an established, predictable routine.

The same is true with our walk through life.  The routine will inevitably vary, so putting our trust in things always being the way they have been in the past is foolish.  Many times God will orchestrate situations in such a way as to soften the blows of painful change.  Other times, however, we will be called upon to simply respond in faith-filled obedience, when there is no resemblance of the normal routine anywhere in sight, no promise of how things will be resolved or how long the transition to a new normal will take.

In the end, through the pages of scripture, I have been given three things that are of greater value than a glimpse into the immediate future:

1. I have been given a glimpse into eternity. "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am." John 14:3
   
2. I have been given a guarantee never to walk alone.  "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” Deuteronomy 31:6
   
3. I have been given a promise of God's unending love. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16

At the end of the day, this is what has been offered to me and it is what I have to offer the world.  It isn't a safe, predictable routine, it is a relationship with the One who created all of us and has a vested interest in our future.  It isn't an advance warning system of difficult changes that lie ahead and it isn't a promise that life will be easy or pain-free.  It is the message of the gospel and it is enough.