Written By: Brenda Brough
These last few weeks have been so strange. Historical.
I’ve talked to friends who are crying every day, friends who are using this time to better themselves, friends who are struggling with
homeschooling, friends who are very lonely,
friends who think the government is over-reaching, friends who haven’t been out of their house
in over a month, friends who are busier now than before we were all sequestered,
and friends who get out of bed early to be at their local store’s daily door opening to score
some freshly stocked toilet paper!
Not-so-very-long-ago,
I was talking to some home-schooling parents while our children
were in choir practice at church.
We started chatting about "learning styles."
I had to admit it.
I'm a visual learner.
I learn better when I SEE a picture of the subject I'm studying.
I need the big picture.
The finished product right in front of me.
Reading was never a problem for me.
I love to read and always excelled at it.
Didn't really need books with pictures.
But when it came to Chemistry.......
I needed models, pictures, something to hold in my hand.
For those of you familiar with homeschooling curriculum,
I went to an A.C.E. (Accelerated Christian Education) school.
We used "Paces.”
They are little study books you completed at your "own pace."
It was beautiful for me.
(Now, for my ADHD children.....not so much.
Too much sitting and having to concentrate on lots of reading
and a mind-numbing number of pages to complete in a day.)
I did fine with English, and Social Studies, and even Math.
But when it came to Chemistry,
I just wanted to SEE how the electrons rotated around the neutrons
and how an atom was constructed.
It was so difficult for me that they called in a special tutor to get me through it.
Recently, I was reading through Psalm 77.
David was voicing his frustration at the beginning of the chapter,
and even seemed to wonder if God was even aware of his struggles.
By the end of the chapter, David seemed to have righted his thinking
and was determined to focus on what he KNEW of God
instead of just what he was seeing at-the-moment.
That is something that I always struggle with.
And I wonder if it's because I tend to be such a visual person.
I love to see how our mighty Elohim reveals Himself to us daily in nature.
It is a wonder to me how intricate and magnificently designed the human body is.
I love to see how flowers are put together,
and animals,
and habitats,
and music,
and babies.
I like to see how things are put together and how our history all falls together on a timeline.
I like to see pictures in magazines of the recipe I'm going to try,
or pictures of the toy I'm putting together for my children.
I can get things done in HALF the time with a picture instead of just written instructions.
But what about the times when I can't understand why things happen the way they do.
Why bad things happen to good people.
Why at this point in history has the world come to a screeching halt?
It looks like God doesn't have the plan right.
Why do we struggle and struggle to do the right thing,
and yet nothing productive comes of it?
Why there seems to be no fruit for the agonizing amount of thought and effort we put into our
children, or homeschooling, or our finances.
But maybe that's what a life of faith is all about.
The Lord tells us that His "yoke" is easy, and His burden is light.
How can that be when our responsibilities feel so heavy that we're drowning?
Am I missing that He has this all planned?
He is the great Captain of our ship and is navigating us through the storms.
He sees what I can't see.
He wants me to trust that He is working, that there is a plan,
and that just because I can't see what it is
doesn't mean He doesn't have everything under control and taken care of.
I just have to learn the discipline of closing my eyes to what I see around me,
plug my ears to the doubts I hear from the culture around me,
and TRUST HIM.
Is that when we can relax and leave the results up to Him?
Is that when it gets "easy?"
Is that what it means to live a life of FAITH?
"Now faith is the substance of thing hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen."
Hebrews 11:1
Continuing in what I know is right even when it seems the obstacles are too insurmountable.
When the flavor of life has gone tasteless,
and the colors have faded?
"Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being alone."
James 2:17
Trusting in the unseen.
NOT being a visual learner, but a truster.
“Turn your eyes upon Jesus.
Look full in His wonderful face.
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim.
In the light of His glory and grace.”