Resting in Routine or Relationship?

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.

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