A quote I recently read by C.S. Lewis instantly transported me back to my high school days of playing tennis. We had good teams, primarily because we had a good coach. But a lot of our wins didn’t come from the two hours of practicing our strokes; they came from that last half hour. The conditioning half hour.
We always knew it was coming, and we never really looked forward to it because we knew one thing: it would be painful. But we never doubted our coach because we also knew one other thing. It was worth it. It gave us an advantage over our competition. We knew that the extra strength, the extra stamina, was often the deciding point between winning and losing.
C.S. Lewis wrote “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”
Isn’t that true? As much as we might want God’s best, we don’t want to hurt. We want to stay where it is comfortable. We want to stay in the known. We don’t want to leave the people we love. We don’t want to give up the people and things we want to keep. Yet we know that when our will and desires clash with God’s, that His plan is always better. And we know it’s probably going to hurt; we just don’t know how much.
One further complication is that as much as we don’t want to experience pain, we also don’t want to be the source of pain for someone else, and sometimes our willful decisions involve others, and fully surrendering to God’s best for us can cause them pain as well.
But if we want to experience God’s Best then that calls for a full surrender, not a partial one. And we must always remember: God is the Master: Master Designer, Master Healer, Master Comforter.
We always knew it was coming, and we never really looked forward to it because we knew one thing: it would be painful. But we never doubted our coach because we also knew one other thing. It was worth it. It gave us an advantage over our competition. We knew that the extra strength, the extra stamina, was often the deciding point between winning and losing.
C.S. Lewis wrote “We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be.”
Isn’t that true? As much as we might want God’s best, we don’t want to hurt. We want to stay where it is comfortable. We want to stay in the known. We don’t want to leave the people we love. We don’t want to give up the people and things we want to keep. Yet we know that when our will and desires clash with God’s, that His plan is always better. And we know it’s probably going to hurt; we just don’t know how much.
One further complication is that as much as we don’t want to experience pain, we also don’t want to be the source of pain for someone else, and sometimes our willful decisions involve others, and fully surrendering to God’s best for us can cause them pain as well.
But if we want to experience God’s Best then that calls for a full surrender, not a partial one. And we must always remember: God is the Master: Master Designer, Master Healer, Master Comforter.
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