Remedy

Every day, at one point or another, I witness a heartbreaking scene. Leah, playing happily on the floor with her toys, dissolves into tears and screams. From my stance, I can see nothing that would have caused such a breakdown and can only assume that it’s the toy in her hand that has suddenly become a problem. It isn’t always the same toy. Sometimes it’s her plastic rings, sometimes it’s her keys, sometimes it’s her stuffed cow, and sometimes it’s even her pacifier. More often than not, the cause of her frustration and angst is a toy that she, herself, selected to play with and that I knew, as she chose it, would bring her frustration.

I always struggle when I see this. I want to rush to her, taking the mean toy away and hugging her until it’s all better. Part of me, though, thinks it is probably good for her, in a way, to get frustrated and work through it. She might be a little bit young for this sort of tough love and education, but it has to be good for her to experience the process of trial and error and the satisfaction of accomplishment. So I sit, watching with an aching heart and wondering what to do. I let her try to fix it, and usually eventually stop what I’m doing to step in when the situation hasn’t remedied itself.

I imagine that God feels much the same way about me as He watches me “play” my way through life.

As my Father, I try to imagine His feelings as He watches me in the predicaments of my life. He sees me choose things that will, no doubt, lead to pain and heartache, but He allows me to choose them just the same. When the inevitable meltdown occurs, I am sure He must shake His head as He remembers that it was my own choice that led to the quandary, and I imagine He might wonder, at times, why He decided to give me free will. I haven’t always done good things with it! He knows, though, that if I am going to learn – if I am going to grow and change and overcome this world – I have to go through those situations. I have to work through it all myself. As my Father, though, does He want to pull me out of it? Does He want to save me from the mess I’ve gotten myself into?

He does…….and He did.

The thing about it is that He saw the messes I would make before I even entered the world. He saw the choices I would face and the errors of judgment that I would make, and He knew the outcome of it all. He knew I would mess up terribly, and He knew that I would have no way to fix it on my own. He knew I needed help undoing the mess I had gotten myself into, so He stepped in. He sacrificed Himself, in an unthinkable act of selflessness as a remedy to my poor choices in this broken life.

How He must love me…..and how I must make His heart ache……..

…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. (Romans 3:23-24)