God's process

Two days ago it was spring and blooming things were starting to look lush and promising.  Today it is snowing.  If there is one truth about the climate that everyone can agree upon, it is that it changes in unpredictable ways.

I am also in a season of walking with friends as they lose their parents.  That is partly due to my own age rising to the mid-fifties.  And as it does, my body changes in ways I don;t appreciate.  Most of us don't like these changes.  The one constant, perhaps, in this veil of tears, is change.

And then I read this yesterday:

 "...[H]e calls us to a life of constant work, constant growth, and constant confession and repentance. Making us holy is God's unwavering agenda until we are taken home to be with him. He will do whatever he needs to produce holiness in us. He wants us to be a community of joy, but he is willing to compromise our temporal happiness in order to increase our Christlikeness. Any time we find ourselves in difficulty or trial, it is easy to think we have been forgotten or rejected by God. This is because we do not understand the present process. God is not working for our comfort and ease; He is working on our growth. At the very moment we are tempted to question his faithfulness, he is fulfilling his redemptive promises to us. After all, it's not like there are only some people who really need to change. Change is for everyone, and God is always at work to complete this process in us."

~How People Change by Timothy Lane and Paul David Tripp, pp. 6-7

Indeed.  It struck me to the heart.  When I rail against change, I am railing against and failing to understand the important process God is working in me or others.  There is a whole theology of suffering in this one paragraph.

So today I am trying to rejoice, but hold joy lightly; trust in God's process when I don't see it or understand it.  I hope you will come along with me, Gentle Reader, and watch what God will do.