By the time you read this everything will be different. All the moments I am about to describe will have passed, but right now, right now there is a friend getting ready to put on her wedding dress, another prays for her child to live, yet another boards a plane for a funeral. In this moment I am standing at a traffic light on my way to work as one driver rages and honks at the other from their car. While all this is happening my mind floods with both thoughts and emotions in reaction to each of these events. All the emotions come at once and I bring to mind my own circumstances, the things in my own life I am grappling with. Through my headphones Chris Tomlin is singing, "How Great Is Our God."On any give day, at any given moment this can be any of us, in one of these situations, faced with the ultimate reality of how little control we have, and how omnipotent God is. On any given day my own struggles can pale in comparison to that of those I love most around me or I can be so self focused on my own circumstances that I don't even see others struggle. I can feel helpless in these moments. I can question God. I can be disappointed in Him and tempted not to trust Him.
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight." -- Proverbs 3:5-6 (NIV)
When I encounter overwhelming or unexpected situations, my initial response can be fear. I'm learning to see that this fear is self-centered. The fear I often face is not a healthy fear of a specific threat in which I can move to action to protect what is important. Rather, it is an anxious fear, undefined, not specific, in which I am unable to act in response because it isn't clear what to respond to. This anxiety often reveals what I am putting my security in and it reveals my pride. It exposes the pride of "I would do it differently, better", or "This is not the way things should go, it's not how life should go." Humble people don't feel superior to anyone, especially God. He is in control in all these circumstances and knows what I do not. He is still a good and benevolent God. When I look at others circumstances and allow fear to drive me inward I become self-centered, I can make others situations about me. Pride and fear make me concentrate on myself and expose my arrogance. Humility turns thoughts to God and others.
