Musings

Musings

My mind seems to be active most of my waking hours.  It is rare that I find myself zoning out with nothing on my mind.  I am usually musing about something.  I can’t say it is always about brilliant things, often I find myself having imaginary conversations with people.  I am not sure if this is too healthy but I do know it can create problems when I expect those same people to remember a conversation we never had!  The biggest problem with doing this is that one day I shared my habit with my wife and now she pulls that out every single time she forgets something that we really did talk about...which is a lot lately.  But I digress...squirrel.  
What I have learned to do is to try and occupy my mind with a few thoughts that are worthy to be meditated on.  As long as I take the time to study my answers out in Scripture, I have found this process helpful. Today, I will share one of those musing, even though I have not come to many conclusions about these musings yet.  Here we go, hope I don’t mess up your musings.
Of all the relationships that God could have used to describe his relationship to Jesus, he used the relationship of a father to a son. He also describes our relationship to him as a father to his children.  It is a choice that brings us great comfort and is full of meaning.  One of the hardest things for me as a parent is to see my children going through times of growth and trying to figure out when I should help or when I should allow them to struggle and grow. Often, as parents, we might be able to step in and help our children. Even our grown children.  We may have the financial ability, the connections or simply the wisdom to step in and ease some of the struggle.  To be honest, that is easy to do.  The hard part is allowing the struggle to do it’s work in our children’s lives. To allow God to provide, to work, and to grow our children.  This gets worse when our children are being refined by God and we are unable to do anything but offer support and strength.  We want, so desperately, to take the pain and struggle away but wisdom and sometimes, helplessness, keeps us from stepping in.  I think that sometimes, we struggle as much as our children during those times.
My musing is this:  Knowing the compassion and love of God, I wonder if he feels the same struggle that I feel when I know I could help but believe it is wise not to?  God, in his infinite wisdom, often brings and uses struggles to strengthen us and grow us, but I do not believe he delights in using those in our lives.  I believe, that as a father, he walks in empathy and compassion with us and longs for the day when we are with him and out of these faith growing struggles. Knowing he was going to raise Lazarus, he still wept.  Maybe over the sin and maybe over the hurt it was causing?  Jesus, when looking at the crowds struggled, was often moved with compassion.  I need to do some more study.  But it is helpful, to me, to think that my heavenly father is moved in empathy when he brings struggles in my life to grow me.  He does not delight in my pain and he will not allow it one more second than it is necessary for me to grow.