looking in the wrong places

August 10, 2003

so i'm at home on friday trying to study for my upcoming accounting exam. and you know when you try to study for something, you always prefer to do anything else, so long as it's not studying. well that was me on friday. i remembered that i had received a package from ebay and put it in my room somewhere earlier in the week. so i spent a large part of the morning trying to find it in my room and in the rest of the house, because it wasn't where i thought i had put it. i reflected on my week, trying to pinpoint when i picked it up and where i put it, and where it may have gone. but all my efforts were in vain. this bothered me to no end. i had to find it, i just HAD to. or else i wouldn't be able to study. something prompted me to go to the mailbox to pick up the mail for the day. and when i opened it, lo and behold, the package that i THOUGHT i had received was waiting for me in the slot. i picked it up, closed the box, and was amazed at my own folly. i had actually imagined the whole thing of picking up the package and putting it in my room. it didn't actually happen, but my mind thought it did. so here i was, looking for a package in my house that didn't exist, because it was sitting in the mailbox.

often we look in all the wrong places when we ask God for something. when we pray for specific items, we tend to shape our focus onto the response we want and that's where we look. when nothing happens, we think God has ignored our prayers or isn't answering us. quite often, however, God has answered us. but in fact, it's something quite different from what we expected when we prayed our prayer, so we miss it. we grumble and complain about God not answering us, when He has. what needs to happen is a shift of our focus/perspective. if you ask God for something, be prepared for His answer, not your own. granted, sometimes God doesn't answer us immediately and we have to wait until His response comes. be patient. He'll answer in His timing, and His ways.

this incident reminds me of a story i once heard, about a guy who was trapped in a flood and was standing on the roof of his house. he asked God to save him. as time passed on, various attempts were made to try and save the guy (i don't remember exactly what they were). attempts like lowering a ladder from a helicopter so he could climb up it and be rescued. the guy denies all these rescue attempts and i think he ends up drowning. and so he thinks that God has not answered him and questions God with "why didn't you save me?" God's response was that He tried saving him many times, through each one of those rescue attempts. because the guy expected something else, he missed God's answer to his prayer. he missed it royally.

where are you looking?

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." (isaiah 55:8-9 [NIV])

Posted by Leo Chan at August 10, 2003 2:05 PM