DEVOTIONAL: Letting go of control

How do we deal with the turbulence of life?

I’ve done a lot of travel in my time. I’ve lost count of the number of planes I’ve boarded prior to covid disrupting everything.  From local domestic flights to long haul international flights, I have travelled a lot and I’ve loved it. I was more than content to live out of a suitcase for periods of time.  All in all, I enjoy all aspects of travel. Except turbulence.

Watching the clouds gather.

For short flights I tend to take the window seat so that I can look at out the sky. On one of my interstate flights, I had my usual window seat and was looking out at the clouds. I started to notice that the clouds were moving towards us. Fast. Before I knew it, I couldn’t see anything but white outside. Within minutes, the plane started to dip side to side, the seat belt sign came on and they announced that everyone needed to return to their seat. The turbulence got pretty bad pretty quickly, so I closed my eyes, leaned back and tried not to think about it.

While turbulence doesn’t scare me, I don’t like the feeling it gives me.  It’s like being on a roller coaster and feeling as if your stomach is about to drop out from under you. But I just sat there and waited it out because really, what can I do about it? There wasn’t anything I could do about the situation. Here I was on a plane with no visibility of what was ahead, at the complete mercy of the pilot and a team of people on the ground somewhere  monitoring the flight. I mean, I could get out of my seat and storm up to the pilot and demand he or she sort it out, but I won’t because he is the pilot and I am not. I don’t know how to fly a plane, so I’m not about to go up to someone who does and tell them how to do their job.

Trusting in the storm.

In this situation, the wisest course of action was to trust the pilot and just wait for instruction. I willingly put my life into the hands of complete strangers and trusted them to get me to the ground safely. Yet, when things go wrong in our life, we are quick to jump up and start shaking our fists at heavens, demanding that God do something about it. [bctt tweet=”We blame God when He doesn’t act in the way we want, then we try and tell Him how to be God #devotions #acw #leilaarmstrong” username=”acwriters”].  I have done this myself so many times that I have no doubt God just rolls his eyes at me.

Much that is out of our control in this life. Yet we can be very quick to blame God for it, instead of trusting that He knows what he is doing. If we think we have complete control over every aspect of our life, we don’t. I don’t believe we have as much control over our lives as we like to think we do. We can try all we like to control everything, but the truth is that in the blink of an eye, it can all be taken away from us. And there is little to nothing we can do about it.

Trusting God

God is not sitting up in heaven giving people diseases and starting wars and famine. I firmly believe that God’s heart breaks more than ours at what is happening in the world. We are living in such a broken and hurting world and there is much we have no control over. So we can choose to tell Him how to be God, or we can trust Him. We can sit at His feet and wait with expectation for Him to move. To speak. Because in His time, He will.

When the clouds get darker, let’s be people who choose to trust God. Even when we can’t see ahead of us. Or when the clouds come towards us faster. Let’s trust that He knows what he is doing and His plans for us are good. And let’s sit and wait for that still small voice to direct us in the way we need to go.