"Just play."
"My confidence is placed in God who does not need our help for accomplishing His designs. Our single endeavor should be to give ourselves to the work and to be faithful to him, and not to spoil his work by our shortcomings" Isaac Jogues
You couldn't count the red lights in front of us if you tried. Our map showed red the entire way and our car moved at a snail's pace. We were in traffic. And I was annoyed.
We sat there. Seconds ticking on the clock, well aware that we were going to be late. I was getting car sick and had to pee. The stop and go had me aggravated. We continued on to our destination but I couldn't help but curse the fact that an accident had us in so much traffic. And on top of that, I was mad that it had ruined my carefully thought out plans to get off work early and avoid the very thing I now found myself smack dab in the middle of, bumper to bumper traffic. We eventually made it to where we were heading, after some careful navigation and a two hour drive. But we were late. And I wasn't going let go of that fact.
Later that evening, I got home and mentioned the terrible thing, that had happened, to my mom. I shared how my perfect plans went so imperfectly. I told her how we drove for two hours. She agreed that it was not fun to be late or to be in that kind of traffic. But she didn't let it go at that because she's a mom,I suppose, and she wants me to be the best I can be.
She ended the conversation by mentioning the reason for the traffic. Instantly, I felt horrible. I knew the reason for the traffic. I heard it on the news in and out of the whole day. Big rigs had crashed. Potential fatalities. She looked at me and said something along these lines, "Yeah, the traffic was bad and it might have messed up your night, but the crash, that could have changed some people's lives forever."
There it is. Plain as day. I missed it. I missed the chance to embrace the seconds God had given me. So what I was in traffic? So what we were late? I was still alive. I was still living and that night I got to go home and tell me family good night! In my world, the traffic was the worst thing. I was lucky. In someone else's world, that very same traffic could have been caused by the shattering of the world they once knew, by the loss of a friend, or parent, or neighbor.
The next day, I sat with a boy I was babysitting and carefully arranged his train tracks on the big table. I found curves and straight pieces that were just the right length and mixed and matched them. If one piece didn't fit I tried another. I added bridges and hills. I was determined to make this train track pretty solid and by the time I was done I was starting to sweat. I could have kept going, kept perfecting the track and getting out all the kinks, but the little boy instructed me, "just play".
So I moved my train in and out of tunnels and along the path. Then there would be a bump, and my instinct was to fix it. The boy saw me fidgeting and looking for the right piece to fix the problem, he looked at me and said, "just play".
I again moved my train along, just following the path and making choo choo sounds as the little boy did alongside me. "Just play", he continued to say. And then, I realized maybe that's all God needed from me too.
I spend so much time trying to lay down the tracks. I want all the bumps in the road straightened out. I want to know where my train is driving. And any delay or thing that knocks me off course has me anxious. As we played with the trains, we had derailments and mishaps. Our trains slowed at the corners. And through it all, we just played.
God gives us seconds, 86,400 everyday to be exact. And the pressure to make each second count, haunts me to some extent. That's why things like traffic and showing up late and lazy afternoons sometimes have me stressing. Sure, those seconds are a gift that each of us can use to further the glory of the Kingdom of Christ. But I've come to know that we don't have to control every second. Sometimes all God needs from us is to just be, in whatever second He places us in.
You and I don't have to lay down all the tracks on our own. God has been building them since the beginning of time. And the truth is we will probably never see the big seconds in our lives coming. But isn't that the beauty of living, sometimes all we have to do is just play.
The pieces all might not line up like we thought they would and our trains might not always be going in the right direction. Some pieces just are not meant to go together and trust me, not everything is going to be perfect. But, He's given us every second for a reason. So even when you're thirty minutes late, or you say the wrong thing, or you don't know where you're heading, God is standing there telling you to just keep playing, and in doing so, I think we all discover the tracks we are meant to go down.
Let go of the tracks and just play. Embrace every second you have, not because it belongs to you or because you're in control, but because the creator of the Heavens and the Earth has designed you to be in that exact moment.
You couldn't count the red lights in front of us if you tried. Our map showed red the entire way and our car moved at a snail's pace. We were in traffic. And I was annoyed.
We sat there. Seconds ticking on the clock, well aware that we were going to be late. I was getting car sick and had to pee. The stop and go had me aggravated. We continued on to our destination but I couldn't help but curse the fact that an accident had us in so much traffic. And on top of that, I was mad that it had ruined my carefully thought out plans to get off work early and avoid the very thing I now found myself smack dab in the middle of, bumper to bumper traffic. We eventually made it to where we were heading, after some careful navigation and a two hour drive. But we were late. And I wasn't going let go of that fact.
Later that evening, I got home and mentioned the terrible thing, that had happened, to my mom. I shared how my perfect plans went so imperfectly. I told her how we drove for two hours. She agreed that it was not fun to be late or to be in that kind of traffic. But she didn't let it go at that because she's a mom,I suppose, and she wants me to be the best I can be.
She ended the conversation by mentioning the reason for the traffic. Instantly, I felt horrible. I knew the reason for the traffic. I heard it on the news in and out of the whole day. Big rigs had crashed. Potential fatalities. She looked at me and said something along these lines, "Yeah, the traffic was bad and it might have messed up your night, but the crash, that could have changed some people's lives forever."
There it is. Plain as day. I missed it. I missed the chance to embrace the seconds God had given me. So what I was in traffic? So what we were late? I was still alive. I was still living and that night I got to go home and tell me family good night! In my world, the traffic was the worst thing. I was lucky. In someone else's world, that very same traffic could have been caused by the shattering of the world they once knew, by the loss of a friend, or parent, or neighbor.
The next day, I sat with a boy I was babysitting and carefully arranged his train tracks on the big table. I found curves and straight pieces that were just the right length and mixed and matched them. If one piece didn't fit I tried another. I added bridges and hills. I was determined to make this train track pretty solid and by the time I was done I was starting to sweat. I could have kept going, kept perfecting the track and getting out all the kinks, but the little boy instructed me, "just play".
So I moved my train in and out of tunnels and along the path. Then there would be a bump, and my instinct was to fix it. The boy saw me fidgeting and looking for the right piece to fix the problem, he looked at me and said, "just play".
I again moved my train along, just following the path and making choo choo sounds as the little boy did alongside me. "Just play", he continued to say. And then, I realized maybe that's all God needed from me too.
I spend so much time trying to lay down the tracks. I want all the bumps in the road straightened out. I want to know where my train is driving. And any delay or thing that knocks me off course has me anxious. As we played with the trains, we had derailments and mishaps. Our trains slowed at the corners. And through it all, we just played.
God gives us seconds, 86,400 everyday to be exact. And the pressure to make each second count, haunts me to some extent. That's why things like traffic and showing up late and lazy afternoons sometimes have me stressing. Sure, those seconds are a gift that each of us can use to further the glory of the Kingdom of Christ. But I've come to know that we don't have to control every second. Sometimes all God needs from us is to just be, in whatever second He places us in.
You and I don't have to lay down all the tracks on our own. God has been building them since the beginning of time. And the truth is we will probably never see the big seconds in our lives coming. But isn't that the beauty of living, sometimes all we have to do is just play.
The pieces all might not line up like we thought they would and our trains might not always be going in the right direction. Some pieces just are not meant to go together and trust me, not everything is going to be perfect. But, He's given us every second for a reason. So even when you're thirty minutes late, or you say the wrong thing, or you don't know where you're heading, God is standing there telling you to just keep playing, and in doing so, I think we all discover the tracks we are meant to go down.
Let go of the tracks and just play. Embrace every second you have, not because it belongs to you or because you're in control, but because the creator of the Heavens and the Earth has designed you to be in that exact moment.
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