Friday, March 5, 2010

Control issues

When I was a kid, I played the position of catcher in baseball. Always. Well, there was that year when I was 13 and I played second base when I played at all, which was rare. Anyway, I was a catcher. I threw the ball back to the pitcher, every pitcher, after every pitch in a game.

But I never pitched a single inning, though I had a good arm. Why? I had no control.

I could throw the ball back to hit a person somewhere in the middle of his body, but when I was tried a few times in practice from the mound, I could not throw the ball over the plate into an area approximately from the underarms to the knees of the person. In other words, I couldn't throw a strike. Had not control.

I saw all that to say control issues, I'm discovering, affect us all.

We want to control our bank accounts, what we do at our jobs, certainly our spouses, our kids, our lives. We want control.

Problem with that is, as near as I can read, scripture teaches us we must lose control to Him, willingly giving it away. Lots of us say we will, or we have, when what we've done is systematically given Him what we don't want control of any longer. Oh, Lord, you can control my taxes. You can have control of those things that I willingly say I can't control. You can fix all the blunders I've gotten myself into.

That's not giving control. That's giving away what you don't want any longer.

I've been there done that.

I've recently come closer to giving absolute control, and I've found it to be a real strugle. Giving up everything means accepting and loving what is given in return. When what that is doesn't measure up to what I thought, well, let's have a revote.

What we see over time is there are no do-overs in decision making. What decisions we make -- control we give over -- is done. We can't say to Him, well, that didn't go the way you said, because unfortunately, having trust in him means we're not given that sort of direction by him. In other words, when we arrive at a crossroad, we take the facts given, pray hard for direction, feel it in our bones and our heart and our mind that we should go a certain way. Then, if it turns out that decision doesn't seem to be the right one, we are not given the alternative side-universe of an episode of Lost. We simply must trust God that He can see the while picture and knows what is good for us.

The Bible says that when things were most difficult for the future king of Israel, David strengthened himself with trust in his God. The Bible says (in the Message) that Jesus told his disciples before He left then: "I've told you all this so that trusting me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace. In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I've conquered the world."

Control issues ultimately are trust issues. Do we or don't we?

That's the correct pitch.

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