I grabbed a folder to bring with me to Iowa so I would have some paper to write on . . . and found inside my notes from several years ago on a seminar on grief by John Claypool. One of his statements that I wrote down was "If getting one's own way is what brings one happiness, grief and loss will be devastating."
Accepting our "creatureliness" involves acknowledging that our lives are lived within a framework that we can neither control nor manipulate. Peace comes from abandoning the desire to write life's script and welcoming the grace that is given for each experience.
Often we curse the darkness, fight against life as it happens, and complain that the grace is insufficient and improperly focused. That is because we want grace for our purposes, rather than seeing in grace a guide to the purposes of God.
The Sovereignty of God is not a reason for me to hope that I might get what I want, but the reassurance that life may be lived on the terms of the attendant grace.
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May God bless you as you spend time with your dad and wait as God reveals his will, and even pray that He will bend it as his children cry out to him.
We've learned about not getting our way these past few days -- few things in Togo are going as we would hope. Yet even a surface reading of Scripture shows that God uses sinful people to write history according to his larger purposes. May we be willing to be used by Him in spite of our own wills. And may we be able to sing from our hearts,
"Let your will, note mine, be done; let your will and mine be one."
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