My wife and I had a glorious evening on Thursday. We spent three hours on the couch with Logan our great-grandson. We had a couple of movies going that we had already seen but our focus was on Logan. It’s glorious to watch his personality unfold. He is already showing traits that will likely last his entire life. We look forward to many years of watching him develop.
The experience made me consider how wise our God is. In so much of life, he gently unfolds things, not hitting us with them all at once. It’s evidence that he is acutely aware of how slow we are to appreciate the beautiful, awesome and glorious things of life. He does this with children like Logan as they unfold like a beautiful flower over their years of growing up. It’s Kaydence’s birthday and looking back over her seven years I’m amazed at the process.
It’s not just kids. Fall, for example, is my favorite season. Even in the parts of the country where fall colors are glorious, God doesn’t unveil them all at once. There are, at first just hints of colors, other than shades of green, in foliage. Slowly the fall colors brighten and emerge until they peak. He usually introduces the other seasons in the same gradual way. The cold days of winter become less frequent before spring pokes out in blooms and blossoms.
He knows us and He knows how poorly we handle change. We cling to what we know, our relationships, jobs, habits, our lives. We can look back and see the changes over years, even decades, but the changes are usually gradual as new things unfold. Sometimes things happen a bit too fast for us, or we suddenly realize that a change is taking place. We notice the ground start to shift beneath our feet and an unexplainable fear, even dread, freezes us. The first thought is that our lives are falling apart. After spending some time with Jesus, we learn it’s just change. Things may actually be falling into place as He moves us into a new and always ultimately better situation, maybe a new era.
If we can just focus on the guaranteed end promised to followers, we can learn to relax and peacefully watch and enjoy yet another glorious unfolding.
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