Presumption and Faith.

Today was my last bible study until next Fall (well there is one more class, but I will not be able to attend, so it was the last one for me), and it was so good.

I personally related to different points made this week such as the warning against presumption spoken of in James 4:13-15:  "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we shall go into such and such a town, spend a year there doing business, and make a profit'- you have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow.  You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears.  Instead you should say, 'If the Lord wills it, we shall live to do this or that.' "

This really ties into my last post!  I think this week's bible study lesson was a true confirmation from God that I just have to hope and have faith, and stop having all these expectations for my future life....to truly just abandon all to Him (and for me this is a daily act! Somtimes a minute by minute act!) so that I can live in the present moment.

My life is contingent upon God.  Even my very next breath, my next heartbeat is dependent upon Him.  I would cease to exist just that quickly if He stopped thinking of me.

What a powerful reminder of how little I am in the whole scheme of things.  And yet what a powerful reminder of how much God loves me...with all the people in the world, He loves me enough to be thinking of me!

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my own "self-importance" (and for me that translates into how important it is for me to have another live baby and how my life should "look" according to this plan I have), that I truly am guilty of presuming things. 

The priest who gave the video commentary on our lesson made this point:  Our personal plans may have been thwarted but there is a divine wisdom behind the whole thing, the hand of divine providence is always involved and sometimes God lets us know the wisdom behind His timing, and sometimes He does not.

A year or two after college I went to a concert in a different city, downtown with a group of probably 6 friends.  It was an all-day event and when we were driving back the 30 minutes to the house a cop pulled our car over.  Luckily our DD (who happened to be DH) was in fact driving, because the rest of us had been drinking throughout the afternoon...but we were all so nervous that he would get a ticket for speeding or something, and then how would the rest of us get home?  Well the cop let him off without any ticket and we just couldn't figure out why he pulled us over in the first place, but we did move from the left hand lane to the right hand lane (of the 4 lane divided highway) and kept our speed a little slower than normal.  Not 3 minutes later, a car came barrelling towards us going the wrong way on the highway at super high speed in the LEFT lane, where we had previously been cruising prior to our incident with the cop. 

God certainly let us know the wisdom behind His timing in that instance....getting pulled over by that cop saved our lives...or at the least saved us from a serious wreck.

Why God has thwarted my every attempt to have a baby after Isabel is beyond me.  I often speculate on it with my very limited human wisdom...I can think of a couple of reasons why I believe it has been this way.  But I wish God would reveal to me His true purpose...I wish He would make it as clear as that night after the concert on the highway. 

There must be a reason...but it is still hard to understand. 

And yet I just have to have faith when I don't understand.  Faith that God knows, and that He knows best. 

Faith that in the meantime, until I understand, that I can still try to live in and do His true and holy will in every moment.