I was in the process of replying to Gayle’s comment on my last post Flestered, when I realized not only was I going on a bit too long in a comment, but that what I was saying would make a good regular post. So I decided to put it here.

Gayle had made mention of God’s plan not being for us to be diving into a pressure cooker of our own making. At least I think that’s what she meant.  If not, oh well, at the least my misunderstanding has prompted a new post…

I am well aware of the phenomenon of creating pressure cookers for ourselves and then diving into them… Martha, all worried and bothered about so many things comes to mind. And I’ve certainly dived into my share of pressure cookers of my own making.

However, I don’t feel like I’ve done that this time, but rather the pressure cooker has just come up around me. Rather like that storm that came up around the disciples in John 6 in our Basics Class lesson Tuesday night. I LOVED that lesson. It was so perfect for where I am.

I’m just looking at it all whirling about, all these things, all these people and animals and voices telling me to do this and that, asking for this and that… demanding I make up scenarios regarding the future, which I am not able to see, lacking omniscience, and then, having made them, put everything into place to deal with them, only to have others come in and change it all, or demand somethiing different…

The storm imagery from John 6: 15-21 was fantastic, and I loved that Jesus knew exactly what He was sending the disciples into when He told them to get into the boats without Him and cross to the other side, that He knew exactly how much they could handle and that He came to them at just the right time. I loved that they were struggling with the oars, rowing and rowing and not really getting anywhere and as soon as they welcomed Him into the boat… poof. The boat was at their destination.

They’d just heard the great dissertation on how He was God in chapter 5, just seen Him feed the five thousand in the beginning of Ch 6, probably still had those twelve baskets of leftover bread and fish… It was all a test and even though it was dark and cold and scary and probably VERY uncomfortable, they had only to look into those baskets and recall what they knew… Who He was, what He could do and the fact that He’d sent them out there Himself. The storm was no accident and nothing of their making…

So, this lesson has just affirmed more and more what God seems to be showing me lately and that’s that my situation is exactly the way He wants it to be and that He will guide me on a moment by moment basis through it. He will show me, at the moment needed, which, if any, of the many activities facing me is the one I’m to do next. If the other things don’t get done. Oh well. It may not be time yet. It may be I won’t have to do them at all.

Because there’s always time to do the Will of God, but it’s not always the will of God to do all the things we have opportunity or pressure to do!