Behind the Scenes
This past weekend, a storm system came through our area, bringing some pretty intense lightning.
My husband works in broadband at a company about 40 minutes from our house. He and several other team members had to go into the office because lightning struck several pieces of their equipment and caused an outage for their customers.
They worked for about 12 hours through the night to rebuild and repair what they could.
My husband arrived home to sleep for a few hours, showered, and then returned to the office to continue working.
When something like this happens, customers get frustrated. This is understandable because a resource they rely on is suddenly unreliable, which can feel disorienting. Some customers understand the problem is temporary and being resolved as quickly as possible, while others make angry comments and demand an immediate resolution.
It is exhausting for everyone.
The thing is, the company isn’t excited to have an outage either. It means something has gone terribly wrong, and it likely means an unexpected investment of dollars to repair damaged equipment.
I was thinking about how the men and women working through the night largely go unseen, even though their lives are also disrupted. Their job is to resolve the crisis as soon as possible. They take the brunt of the criticism when something is broken but rarely receive thanks when it works well.
Somehow, all of this led me to think about how we sometimes relate to God like grumpy customers.
Something happens in our lives that causes our plans to be paused or wholly rearranged, and we find ourselves wondering where God is at that moment. Wondering why God isn’t working out all of the details. Wondering what God is even doing. Wondering how long it is going to take to sort it out. Wondering if it will ever be fixed. Wondering if God even hears us.
Like the angry customer, we state our demands and our disapproval without paying attention to how God is actively working behind the scenes.
The circumstances we find ourselves in might differ from what we expected or feel upside down from what we planned. And yet, we are never alone. God is with us. At all times, in all things.
God does not promise that our days will be without trouble; in fact, the opposite is true. Trouble is a part of the human condition - sometimes life breaks and leaves us reeling, unsure of what we can rely on.
But when we find ourselves wondering if we can rely on God, the answer is an emphatic yes.
Numbers 23:19
“God is not a man, that he might lie, or a son of man, that he might change his mind. Does he speak and not act, or promise and not fulfill?”
We can rely on God, no matter what else is happening around us.
God is with us. Always.
God loves us. Always.
We can hope in God. Always.
We may never fully see or comprehend everything happening behind the scenes in our lives, but we can say, it is well with my soul, because God is on the throne, and that will not change.
~ Melissa