By Rebekah Robinson, The Rope Contributor
Here in Birmingham, we got a lot of rain last night. It was the kind that forces you to drive slower than usual and gets you soaked no matter how big your umbrella may be.
Have you ever thought about how completely weird rain is? It’s water falling from the sky. FROM THE SKY! There’s a lot of bizarre things about our world that I often wish I could just ask our Maker, “Why??”
We all crave answers.
After a long conversation with a friend about our lives moving so quickly and yet we all kind of feel like we’re at a red light all at the same time, she said, “I mean, but God doesn’t hand us the next 40 years on a silver platter.”
Somedays I would love for God to just appear to me in a vision or a dream or something and just “let me know” that I’ll be doing just fine in … five? ten? fifty years? I don’t think I’m the only one who feels this way sometimes.
Time’s a fickle thing. We say that we have the past behind us and the future supposedly before us, but in truth all we have is today (I really hope that didn’t sound too much like one of those motivational posters you can get at Hobby Lobby or whatever).
Why are we so anxious about our futures, our carefully planned tomorrows? Why do we hope — in vain — for things of this world to fill us up and tell us that we are “doing just fine?”
I’ve always thought it was interesting that Matthew 6 contains both the Lord’s Prayer and the passage that so clearly tells us, “Do not be anxious about your life.” Jesus taught us how to pray, so sweetly and so simply, and then made it clear that we need not worry about our tomorrows.
Your Kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as it is in Heaven.
The Kingdom will come, whether or not you or I prayed for it. But wouldn’t life be so much sweeter if that were our honest prayer every day? Maybe we shouldn’t start our days worrying about our plans. Maybe we should begin with the simplest of prayers.
Jesus came to free us, so we shouldn’t keep putting on the shackles of worry. They are absolutely pointless.
It’s not raining anymore. It will probably rain again soon, but I don’t know for sure. For now, I’ll just be thankful.
