You'd think I'd learn. After all, for years in working with children I've explained in simple words that they can understand that making Jesus Lord means that you ask Him to be the boss of your life. The thing is, asking Jesus to be Lord of my life in general, doesn't seem to be that hard. I want Him to be the boss of my life, to guide me in the life's big or difficult decisions. However, it's in the nitty gritty everyday things, that I find myself wanting to run my own show. When I was a girl, the girls' club at church had as part of it's motto, "to be faithful stewards of time, money and talent." It's that first one that I like to be in control of. I like to be the boss of my time. I'm a people person with introvert tendencies. I feel most comfortable when a day has "margin" in it. If a day is too jam packed with activity I start to feel anxious inside. While I like to be the boss of my time, I've learned the hard way that my days go much better when I relinquish the controls of my time to the One I call Lord. On days that I have a list of things to-do or one that is filled with appointments it is especially crucial that I start the day asking Him to take charge.
But, I don't always do it! I don't always put time with the Lord and in His Word first. I don't always look at that day's to do list, that day's appointments on the calendar, and relinquish it all to God and ask Him to order my day. When I don't, the day just never seems to go right. When I do, even a day filled with interruptions seems to work out.
This morning I looked at my scribbled list of things that absolutely, positively needed done today. There were also some things I hoped to get done. I actually did start the day by spending time with God and reading the Bible as well as asking Him to help me and to order my day. Like I said, some days I'm not that smart. Mid-devotions, my daughter called about a change in her schedule that meant I didn't need to watch my grandson for her. While I absolutely love having him and knew I would miss having my time with him, I also knew that God was helping clear the way for me to do some of the things on my list that I would rather have had an excuse to avoid. Things like checkbook balancing, bill paying and some work that involved looking up some records, making some copies, and mailing some correspondence. Undistracted, I was accomplishing a lot and the day was humming along smoothly. Then my husband called, interrupting my work with his phone call, and said that he had accidentally locked the keys in his car and that I would eventually need to come to the church with his spare car key. That doesn't sound like a big deal, except we live a half hour drive from the church and once the big items on the to-do list were done I had planned to go running and write my blog post and...I felt myself start to get frustrated that my plans were getting messed up.
I finished up most of the items on my list and was on the way home from making copies and mailing my correspondence when I had an idea, or maybe the Boss of my life gave me an idea. I called the hubs and told him I had a few more things to finish at home, but suggested I come right after that and instead of running in my neighborhood we could both run/walk by the river before heading home. So that's what we planned to do. As I was leaving the house, I decided to bring my camera along, just in case.
When I gave the husband the spare key to his car, his keys to the car, house, church, everything, were not in his coat pocket in the car as he had thought. Again, I found myself starting to get frustrated, because it was getting later , and we still needed to find his keys, go on our run, and I still had dinner to fix once we got home. A half hour after looking everywhere he thought the keys might be, he found them in the car wedged under the floor mat and we were finally able to head down to the path by the river. That is how God, the boss of my life, arranged it for me to capture this beautiful sunset.
But that isn't the end of what He was up to. When I got home I started fixing dinner. By now, God had gotten through to me because I could see what a great job He had done being in charge of my day. The fact that dinner was going to be later than normal wasn't really bothering me. I was just about to plate it up when there was a knock on the door. My husband and I weren't expecting anyone, but there on our porch was one of the sweet young single mamas from church and her little boy. Some months ago she had moved to the southern part of the state and was up in the area visiting family and decided to stop by and see us on her way home. So, because we were just about to sit down to eat when she arrived, she and her little guy were able to join us for dinner. Then, as she was about to leave she mentioned that she had forgotten her car phone charger somewhere and still had hours to drive in the dark with an almost dead phone. Concerned for her safety, my husband was able to give her an old phone charger of his.
The moral of the story? Sometimes, when you let Jesus be the boss of the nitty gritty of your life, He works things out for your good and for the good of the people around you, too.
Still following,
