How Often Do We Ask Why?

“But the jar the He was forming did not turn out as He has hoped, so He crushed it into a lump of clay and started again.” – Jeremiah  18:4

I remember so clearly the first time God really used this verse to speak to my heart.  I was around 17 and I was doing a Singles Life talk at a Christian girls retreat.  When I read the second half of this verse I remember the chill, my heart started racing and the verse just came alive in that moment. How awesome is the power of God’s word and how crazy is the fact that it doesn’t only happen once?  Here in Costa Rica God has again laid this verse on my heart, just not for the same reasons.

Let me try to explain what I mean (by how it is different).  If you have ever watched Pastor Mike’s pottery presentation in church you might remember a certain part that no one really expects.  You watch Pastor Mike make a vase, a beautiful vase, and then all of a sudden it seems as if he is intentionally destroying it.  But, that is not what he is doing.  The entire time he was planning on making a bowl, and so he had to cause parts of the clay to collapse and then rework on other parts.  The first time I saw this presentation the first thought that popped into my mind was, “why?”  Why, it doesn’t make sense, I don’t understand.  How often is that my first thought when God does something in my life?  Why.

I guess what I am trying to say is this, how often do we feel like we too are being crushed and all we can do is ask why.  We can have peace and hope that the Lord is in control, this gives us rest and strength, but we often still ask why.  Right before I left for IGNITE my dad got literally crushed by a truck, just a couple of days before my brother’s wedding.  I remember being at work when I heard the news and all I could do was walk back and forth in the copy room, praying.  All I could say was, “Lord why?  I know that you are in control, I know that you can do wonders through this.  You are a great God and You give me Your peace.  But, right now I am so confused.  Please Lord, please, show me what you are doing in this and please let me selfishly keep my father here on earth.” 

God still hasn’t show my family and me what He was and is doing through that accident.  As soon as we were starting to be able to stand on our feet financially God took that blessing from us.  I don’t know why and that is okay.  When I found out I was being sent to Costa Rica, the first thing I said in my mind was “why?” It was the last place I wanted to be sent, and yet I had complete peace because I knew that was where God wanted me.  Now I wouldn’t have wanted to be sent anywhere else, in all truthfulness.  I still don’t know why God sent me here, but He is slowly revealing to me why He placed me here.  But, we are in the beginning of month three and He begins to answer my question of why.  Go to love His timing and the lessons we learn through it. J 

It reminds me of a song, How He Loves.  The first verse goes, “He is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree, bending beneath the weight of His wings and mercy.”  It was actually when I was thinking of this song that God put this verse on my heart.  God’s love is described as a hurricane, an extremely strong and destructive storm.  Hurricanes can take away everything a person has in an instant and I am sure those people always wonder “why them.”  But the song says that we bend, not that we break.  Just like a hurricane brings rain, clay needs water in order for it to be flexible, in order for it to be moldable.  How much easier is it to trust ourselves, to become “hard and dry” to God’s molding when we think that we have it.  Yet, when we are in the middle of a storm, we tend to lean on Him more, we tend to be more flexible to His voice.  We don’t ask why, we ask how we can learn to dance in the rain.  We let go and Let God.  

Trust.

Hope that made sense! God bless :)