What if your pressures, challenges and frustrations about this season in your life actually had little to do with this season in your life? What if today’s empty hand was preparation for what you will be entrusted to hold tomorrow?
What is your singlehood was not a problem but a gift? What if it wasn’t just married people who said that but the strongest Christian who ever lived, the Apostle Paul, who also happened to be single? (1 Corinthians 7:7-8, 32-34)
What if growing old was not thought of as a loss but as an attainment, to be respected by the young and properly stewarded by the old?
What if you really believed that God feels passionately for you and is not some detached Deity, preoccupied with managing the cosmos at the expense of the Fatherly care that you need?
What if you decided today to stop squelching that creative impulse in you just because it isn’t appreciated or affirmed by those with whom you are close?
What if you grew to despise the thought of living another day for sub-par purposes and the mindless pursuit of attaining material things? What if you exited the rat-race in fear that you might actually win it and thus become the king or the queen of the rats?
What if you gave yourself permission to turn loose of your need to control and manage pretty much everything?
What if you committed to find a hurting person today with no other agenda than to come away with a certainty about you will help them?
What if your lofty & orthodox theology suddenly turned into shoe-leather love and help?
What if that person you are hesitant to share the message of Christ with became a believer because your love for them finally outweighed your fear of their rejection of the message you still haven’t told them?
What if a haughty look never found your face again because you uprooted arrogance from your heart?
What if that baby in the grocery store became the object of a two-minute prayer from you regarding her present health, ongoing safety, future joy and unfolding purpose in the sight of God?
What if someone who is sick or lonely picked up the phone on the first ring today and heard your voice saying, “I’ve been thinking about you today – do you have a minute to chat?”
What if you barged into the presence of Jesus in prayer and spewed out how utterly sick and tired you are about the stubborn bitterness in your heart and that, if He will help you, that you are desperate enough to forgive anyone and everyone whose name He speaks into your mind?
What if you chose to do with your past sins and failures and guilt and shame the very same thing that God has done with those things?
What if you knew that tomorrow would be your final day on earth and that God was offering you an unobstructed opportunity to embrace whatever you thought would be best for those final hours?
All of these what-if’s are intended to do one thing: slow us down and have us wrench our minds out of the ruts we are in so we can get up under today for a better view of things. We do well to get still and quiet and consider how different things might be. While we wait on the big changes which have not yet come our way, what about the myriad of little things that are well within our power? We can all make a difference somehow, somewhere for somebody. But we probably need to receive a different perspective if a better reality will ever find us. Get up under your day today and ask God for an expanded perspective. I am sure He will have something to share with you.
The “what ifs” confront my very human need for certainty. They roll into your bottom line of giving up managing everything.
The thought of resting in Christ can still feel lazy or negligent to me. Until I begin to see that it IS action. The most intense action that is required of me.
On the outside it appears almost flippant, but the effort required in staying at His feet is an athletic endeavor.
And well spent!
Romans 12:2 comes to mind (pun intended). I’ve been told and my experience validates that a transformed mind occurs intentionally. I’ve also been told that the transformation comes about in two ways: 1. change what I think about so that my actions are changed accordingly and 2. change what I do so that my mind is changed accordingly. It’s a two-pronged attack against the tyranny of my comfortable and safe ruts.