Finding a way out

This past Sunday as a youth event we went to an escape room. The goal of the room was to figure out a myriad of puzzles so you could eventually escape. I will admit that I thoroughly enjoyed it even though it frustrated me. To escape our particular room, we had to find three keys to "deactivate" a bomb and then find a code that we would have to put in a keypad to unlock the door.

WELL...with 10 people trying everything they could for an hour....we found 1 key and no code.

BOOOM! We lost! The bomb exploded and the only way we escaped is when the person in charge opened the door to let us out.

While this was an exciting activity, and something I would like to try again, it DID spark my thinking about some of the struggles of life that we are sometimes put in.

Doesn't sometimes it feel like life is a little bit of an escape room? Instead of enjoying things, you are just trying to allude the latest conflict? Maybe you just seem to be going from one problem to another? Is life really becoming a bunch of rooms filled with mouse traps?

When things seem to be getting this way in my life, I do my very best to try to keep things in perspective. The world is NOT against me. Just because my hair won't spike up the right way or my pencil lead breaks DOESN'T mean all is lost. See, many times when things start going bad we then start LOOKING for more things to go bad.I've heard it said that "bad things come in threes." Well, if I stick to that thinking, once one bad thing goes wrong, I'm basically just waiting for the next two. That's NOT the way to handle things! 

The second thing I try to do is remind myself, this is only a season of life. Everything ebbs and flows, and goes back and forth. I believe life is the same way. Sometimes things are REALLY hard, but I know there will also be times that are easy and fun. The key is to be able to REMEMBER those times. Instead of getting bogged down in the bad, recall the good.

The last thing I do, that's always the most important, is realize I'm not alone in this struggle. No matter how bad it gets, I have God by my side. And sometimes all I can do IS RELY on God. There was another expression I heard when I was younger, "God will never give you more than you can handle." I actually USED to believe that was true. I don't believe that anymore. Why? Because, in those moments when we are given too much WE can handle, that's generally when WE go to God. The problem with MANY of us, including me, is that sometimes to admit my weakness or my struggle, it needs to reach incredibly low levels. My pride keeps me from seeing my immense need for God in that moment.

The other great thing about God, is God blessed us with so many stories in the Bible of people who intensely needed God....but then maybe forgot about this just a short time later. The most concrete story I see is Jonah. (Full Story HERE) Jonah is given the instruction to go to a city and preach to them that they need to repent of their sin. Now I'll admit, that doesn't sound fun. BUT, the instructions ARE pretty simple. Which of us wouldn't want God speaking THAT directly to us?!? But, instead of listening, Jonah flees in the opposite direction. He boards a boat and sets sail THE WRONG way. As I mentioned earlier though, God is ALWAYS with us, and was still with Jonah as much as he tried to escape. A huge storm comes up and the boat with all the people on it are in GREAT peril. Jonah realizes his error and tells the people to throw him overboard. Immediately when Jonah hits the water, the storm stops. Then what happens to Jonah? He is swallowed by a BIG fish. Not eaten, just swallowed. Now, Jonah prays. It took Jonah ending up in the belly of a fish to reach out to God!!!

And there is a big part of our struggle. Why should it have to get SO bad before we turn to God? Why can't it just be semi-bad, or minimally bad, and then we turn for help already? Instead of being Jonah, why can't we be like a 3 year old? I say this because I have the image of my son Micah.

"Can you help me with these legos dad?

Sometimes at the smallest bit of resistance of something, he turns to me to ask for help. Whether it's puzzles, legos, or socks; Micah will ask for help. What if WE turned to God like that? Instead of being stubborn and prideful like Jonah, what if we could be like a child constantly turning to a parent for help?

Because that's truly who God is. A caring and loving parent. Jesus invites us to come to Him in Matthew 11:28-  ²⁸ “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
The rest, the comfort, the peace, that COMES from God. God gives us that. So instead of just taking the BIG things to God, let's try taking all those little things too. Let's stop looking for the next bad thing to happen, but instead look for the next unexpected blessing. 

God is good, even if many things in our world are not.