God of the Impossible Situation

I went outside for my morning quiet time and sat down at the garden table underneath my umbrella. The summer sun wasn't scorching yet and the air was cool. Birds were making morning music in the trees and the bees and dragonflies were buzzing busily around me. But my mind was somewhat absent from all of this glory. I was thinking over what our lesson in church had been about the previous Sunday, Jesus feeding five thousand men, plus women and children, with no food to be seen anywhere in the region. An impossible situation. He asked his friends Where will we buy bread for all these people? He didn't ask because He didn't know, He asked so that he could bring up a point. He wanted them to understand that what He was about to do was impossible. He knew there was nothing to eat, no store, no money. They answered Him. 200 silver pieces wouldn't be enough to feed all these people, however, there is a little boy with a few loaves and a couple of fish, although that wouldn't be a drop in the bucket for all these folks. (my own paraphrase, of course.) But he tells them to sit, he takes the bread, breaks it, and blesses it and hands it out. And it's not just enough, there are leftovers! Yay for leftovers!

I went home from church and got involved with daily life for a few days and the lesson slipped to the back of my mind.

Yesterday morning my friend came over for coffee and chit chat. We sat out underneath the umbrella and sipped our morning brew and talked over what God had been showing us since the last time we met for coffee and chit chat. She started with Psalm 78. A story about all the impossible things God did to free his people from the hand of the Egyptian people. The plagues. The Red Sea. The water from the rock. And the people repaid him with complaints and lack of trust. They said You gave us water, and you gave us Manna, but how about meat? WE WANT SOME MEAT! They didn't just want it, they craved it. Fantasized about it. And God was not pleased. I turned to the actual story in Numbers to see how that whole scenario played out. 

Chapter 11. The people grumbled. Ouch. Thinking about how much grumbling I have been doing, this hits kinda close to home. Reading on to verse 4. The meat. Who's gonna give us meat? WE WANT THE MEAT! We remember the meat and fish, and onions, leeks, and garlic we ate without cost in Egypt. Waahhhhhh....where we gonna get meat? Yeah, yeah, We know You gave us Manna, that's not enough. We want MEAT, by golly. They just keep on and on about the meat, til God says, in verse 18, OK, Moses, tell them I'm going to send them some meat. Boy oh Boy, are they going to get some meat! Lots and lots and LOTS of meat! And then I couldn't believe what I read. Moses. MOSES, who saw the burning bush, handled a snake staff, traveled on down to Egypt and led the people out of there, after seeing God call down all those plagues...led the people across the sea on dry ground, and followed the cloud that WAS God, smote the rock to make water run out...Moses says HOW GOD? How you gonna do it? There are 6 hundred THOUSAND men plus women children here. How you gonna feed us? Empty the sea? Shall we kill all the cows? And God answers How inadequate do you think I am? Believe you ME It's gonna happen! (obviously me paraphrasing again.)

My mind jumped back to our Sunday School lesson. How Jesus? How we gonna feed all these people? (as if they had never laid eyes on a miracle in their lives)  Half a year's wages wouldn't be enough! And these fish and bread aren't going to do a hill of beans for all these folks. ! Impossible is what they are thinking.  

Coffee and chitchat concluded, my friend and I ruminate, as we walk to her car, about how God always seems to dovetail what the two of us have been hearing from Him. She goes home and I start thinking.

Don't we do the same thing? Again and again, just like the Children of Israel, He brings us out of trouble, sets our feet on high ground, and then we start complaining again. I can hear myself, as I type this. "I know you brought us out of the worst year of our lives, in 2012, God, and miraculously, and I mean MIRACULOUSLY changed things around, and you have been there every step of the way, providing for us, taking care of us, teaching us, I know all that, God, but how about my house, God? It's falling apart? Are you gonna help, God? Are you there, God? Things aren't happening on my timeline, God...Do you care, God?

What a slap in the face that must be to Him! After all the things He has brought us through! The miracles He performed in my OWN life. That things I've seen with my OWN eyes. Where is my faith? Where is my trust in the God who did all that? Just like the disciples, who saw Jesus performing all those miracles, yet still couldn't see how He was going to feed all those people. Just like Moses, holy man that he was, even though he saw all that God did for His people, still had to ask How, God As if he had never laid eyes on a miracle before in his life. And as for me, Guilt is slapped like dirty five letter word across my forehead, because I have done the same. Complained and sold God short, despite all the things I have seen Him do, and not just about my house, but about a lot of other things, as well. 

Later, yet again sitting out in the garden and thinking some more about all this, .I had a small revelation. I looked down at my Bible laying on the table, all 66 tabs sticking out toward me, denoting the various books. In my mind I saw myself rifling through the Bible, book by book. Page by page, story by story. I was thinking of the individuals, protagonists of each story, if you will. Noah. Jacob. Abraham and Sarah. Daniel. Esther. David. Job. The list goes on and on. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. Paul. Then this thought. The whole book, the entire book, is really just one story, the same story throughout. All of these people, without exception have something in common. All of their stories have one unifying theme. God making the possible out of the impossible. Different scenarios, different people. But always God making what can't be humanly possible, possible. 

 Breathing life into a pile of dirt. That's pretty impossible. Saving Noah. I'd say that was a truly impossible situation. Abraham and Sarah. Baby? A nation that outnumbers the stars? From this old body? Impossible. Joseph? From a pit and slavery to second in command of the whole land of Egypt. Who would have thought it? The children of Israel enslaved in Egypt? How we gonna get out of this situation? Bad, bad situation...Impossible you might say...Pharaoh will never let them go! Just how do you go about getting 166 thousand people from one country to another, anyway? You mean we're going to have to WALK? FOR FORTY YEARS? Impossible! Story after story it goes on.  David? From shepherd to king? Not very likely. Isaiah? On the run from the wicked queen, and starving to death. But God sends birds to feed him? Daniel? Now there's one for you. Hungry lions breathing on him, but he walks out! Esther? Whose people were doomed to die? God certainly did the impossible there. Saved her life, and the lives of her people, on the brink, the very brink of extinction. Impossible for the King's word to be retracted. Doomed to death, but God makes a way. Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones. Can these bones live? God asks him,  YOU KNOW He says! I like to think maybe he added a little to the end, YOU KNOW IT, he says! (my own wishful thinking interpretation) God tells him to prophesy, and what happens? THE BONES LIVE! They put on muscle and skin and live again! That sounds impossible to my human brain. But God said LET THEM LIVE. And so they do. The children of Israel again in slavery...for seventy years this time...and all of a sudden the king just says, go home, Israelites. How likely is that? Not too likely, if you ask me! But once again, God arranges it! Mary? Not only not married, but a virgin, to boot? Having a baby? Yeah, right. But God, says YES. and the impossible happens. Elizabeth and Zech...all those miracles Jesus performed...and the greatest one of all, HE LIVES. The miracle of the gospel, getting out to the entire planet, through twelve people. That sounds pretty impossible to me. But you're hearing it now because of them. And down through the ages the story begun on page one and continuing through all 66 books, is still going on, in our own lives. He makes the impossible possible. Israel? A dispersed nation? All over the world? The Bible says that they will be gathered from afar and become a nation again in just one day. ONE DAY. Impossible. And yet...1948...in one day they became a nation again. 

Today, I had an interesting finish to this story. I hadn't intended it to end this way, but here's how it went down. It wasn't an impossible situation, but you don't necessarily have to be faced with an impossibility to ask for help. It was a small thing, but it completely fell in line with this story. I have been painting all day long. And I'm tired. Bone tired. I'm Trying to get my dining room out of the disaster it's been in for about a year. I have tried about five different colors and none of them seemed right. The last color was called Deep Sangria  it looked beautiful on the card, and was so dark on the wall it was like being in a closet. Ugh. Didn't realize it until one whole wall was painted. So I started over, with a brand new can of Kills. That's what I was doing today. Painting over what I had already painted. Trying to cover all that Deep Sangria. A necessity, since the new color, called Pale Linen, is a very, very light, almost white color. I thought for sure there was enough primer. I was close to the end, and I heard myself say I'm gonna run out, there won't be enough to finish, and there was a little panic, because I'm on a budget and I already spent paint money this week. I was so close to the finish line that to think of dragging all the equipment and rollers, etc out for the little bit I had left at a later date was something I didn't want to contemplate. So I said Um, Lord...And he said Go look where you keep your paint. And so I did. And to my surprise,  in the collection of half used paint I keep in my laundry room, there right on top was another can of primer! Now I don't remember buying that primer. If I had known it was there, I wouldn't have bought the Kills. Not saying that at some point I didn't buy it, but I sure don't have any recollection of it. And it was almost full! More than enough! Leftovers again!

I love it when God brings a story to mind, and then illustrates it with a life lesson for me. Forgive me, Lord, for all the grumbling and complaining I do when things don't go my way. Help me to trust in you, always, for the impossibilities life presents, and for the small things that arise in daily life.