I opened my eyes, lazily surveying the edge of my pillow before closing them again. Morning. It was morning.
I turned over and pulled my blankets up over my face as I tried to push away the thoughts that rumbled into my consciousness, threatening to crowd out slumber’s peace. Yet, just as the weight of reality and life’s big and small disappointments began to settle over my heart, something unusual happened. It was almost as if I heard him whisper.
What if you are looking at it all the wrong way?
And so God sowed the seed of truth.
He watered it this afternoon with the help of Nancy Leigh DeMoss, who wrote in her Lies Women Believe about a missionary to China.
Arthur Mathews served as a missionary in China from 1938-49, when the Communists took control. He was one of the last China Inland Mission missionaries to leave China in 1953, after being held under house arrest for four years with his wife and daughter. His writings reflect a commitment to self-denial and a willingness to embrace the plan and purposes of God in suffering:
We tend to look at the circumstances of life in terms of what they may do to our cherished hopes and convenience, and we shape our decisions and reactions accordingly. When a problem threatens, we rush to God, not to seek his perspective, but to ask him to deflect the trouble. Our self-concern takes priority over whatever it is that God might be trying to do through the trouble….
An escapist generation reads security, prosperity, and physical well-being as evidences of Gods’ blessing. Thus when he puts suffering and affliction into our hands, we misread his signals and misinterpret his intentions.
“We rush to God, not to seek his perspective, but to ask him to deflect the trouble” — how true this has been of me, particularly this past year.
What if you are looking at it all the wrong way?
So, here’s to turning over a new leaf — the leaf of the Truth sown into my heart this morning.
May God give me eyes to see life from his perspective. May I look at it the right way.
Incandescent Ink 