Have you thought about how lucky we are as a family? I don't know how God could of blessed me more. I have blogged before about people in my life that helped to shape me but also shaped so many others. I have always felt very fortunate that I had high quality individuals but also high quantity of time. Many of those people spent a lot of time with me.
The other side is the unfortunate people who have lived miserable lives. They have been abused, deserted, starved, etc. Why does one person have such great fortune and the next person have a life that many of us could not even bear?
Even at a more personal level, why didn't God answer some of my prayers when I needed Him the most?
The quickest and easiest answer is the fact that we don't live in heaven. We live on earth. Good things that we don't deserve and bad things that we don't deserve happen to us. In fact, I could make the argument that I'm not sure that we have earned any blessings. This is an obvious but extremely important point for me. So many people look at what God hasn't done in their life. The 'Why Me" approach. I will even be direct enough to say it is tempting to say "God how could you let my dad die from cancer when I prayed so hard?" Instead I choose to say "God thank you for giving me such a great gift of quality time with a great dad." This is where I prefer to think God cried with us at the death of dad and rejoiced at the sight of him in heaven.
God also has a big picture view of what is best. How many times have we prayed for something that we are so thankful that God did not grant us that prayer? There are jobs that I wanted really bad that I am so thankful that I did not get. God knows best. More importantly, sometimes our wishes aren't best for those around us. Some of the biggest decisions impact family and friends. What would have been best for me may not have been best for Emily and Blake. I am so blessed that God helped me to find a good spouse that is also a Christian mother. While I went through a divorce that hurt and a lonely time where I was asking God for a good companion, He knew that it was going to take some time to align Shari's world and my world together. He also knew that I wasn't ready for another relationship yet. I needed to do some healing. His timing is better than mine.
You do have to have faith that God does know best. He knows that trials build character. He also has a much bigger plan. He wants for us but He wants to accomplish so much more. He wants us to understand his plan and be apart of it. Do you think that some of your prayers are more for earthly good than for Gods plan?
I do believe that God has created a wonderful world. It has magnificent mountains, rivers, oceans, skies, etc. It also has some amazing facts: gravity, sunlight, atoms, cells, etc. It is a master piece. It is not heaven. God wants man to live life to its fullest. When we do badly, our kids pay the price. Abuse your kids and their kids will likely turn in to abusers. Our mistakes can live in our kids for generations. It's not a lottery in which family you will end up in. We are offspring of our parents and grandparents. God didn't choose to put us into the different families. We were born in to them.
