Entrusted

October 03, 2007
From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.
Luke 12:48


I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this verse today. As I belted in the base to the car seat I thought about how odd it felt to climb on up on that awkward thing while I tried my hardest to tighten the strap. It reminded me of how many times I had watched my siblings and friends do exactly that while I thought, "Is it really necessary to climb in there? Come on...." Go ahead, laugh....I admit I'm a total novice. Apparently watching people does not automatically make you a professional when it comes your time to do it.

But what struck me about the experience was a note I found in the depths of my truck. I had written it at work because on the back of the paper is the cash register report for closing the shop. It obviously was sometime in the spring, before May:

'Yesterday was a dust day. As a Christian I place so many expectations of perfection on myself, forgetting time and time again that anything good I do is only because Christ resides in me. He remembers that we are but dust.....

Sometimes He gives us days like yesterday to remind us of just that. There was actually nothing about yesterday that should have aroused such deep emotion in me, but whoa, I was a mess. At work I distracted my mind with lattes and sudoku, but I had woken up in such a funk that nothing could really keep my feelings of impending doom at bay. I honestly believed we were going to get a phone call saying this whole thing had been called off. Last night we went to dinner at our friends' house and I got a chance to hold a 5 week old baby. It was weird! I felt totally uncomfortable; partly because someone just walked up to me and asked if I wanted to hold him when I didn't even know who he belonged to, and partly because for some odd reason my mind has not been able to actually envision a child at the end of this process....'

And there the note ends. It looks like I may have written more but I haven't found the other half yet. I think the thing worth mentioning here is the state of mind I had then versus what I find myself in now. I don't have any feelings of impending doom. Anxiety? Heck, yes. Occasional panic? Sure, that too. Excitement? Absolutely, but impending doom? No. I keep trying to decipher if I'm feeling any of that, but it seems like the doubting voices have been silenced. I thought in church on Sunday about the possibility of this whole thing going sour as well. Before, thoughts like those would have immediately been followed with the, "Don't you dare, God"s and the "I don't know what I would do if this didn't work out"s. But on Sunday, when the thought crossed my mind, it lacked devastation. What in the world!?!

So how in the world does this relate to the passage in Luke? As emotionally complicated and mentally exhausting as this whole process has been, I feel like it is also something with which God has entrusted us. Like the memorable dialogue in the movie, Evan Almighty, if we ask God for patience does He just give us patience, or does He provide an opportunity for us to be patient? If we ask God for courage does He just give us courage, or does He provide an opportunity for us to be courageous? So each experience, each struggle has been entrusted to us, but the purpose of them is not in just reaching the end. It's preparation for more.