Saving Ourselves

If you're anything like me, you seek a lot of opinions. When anything is going on, I have a handful of folks that I go running to to see what they have to say, to see if they see things the same way that I do, to receive the reassurances that things are going to turn out okay. 

In the age of the internet, we also ask our computers a lot of things. You can even take a picture now and search for that picture. It's crazy the amount of information that we have at our fingertips. 

And yet...when it all comes down to it, there's only one bit of information that matters: the official report. 

You can't act on the opinions of your friends. You can't act on the wisdom of the experts. You can't act on the article you found on the back pages of the internet that kind of sort of half mentions something like this. You can't act on your own gut instinct. If you want to move forward in this world, you can only act on the official record - on what was said and decided by the person with the authority to speak and to decide. 

This is true in our work - where the boss has to approve your wild idea. This is true in medicine - where the doctor has to authorize the treatment. This is true in homeowners associations - where the neighbors have to give the nod to your new fence. We spend our lives seeking options and opinions and opportunities only to run right up against the wall of authority every time and realize it all comes back to one authority that either yeas or nays it. 

If we're honest about it, we should have already known this. 

Because the same is true with God. 

We spend our lives running around, trying to gather opinions and options and opportunities. We ask our friends, our family, our bosses, our coworkers, our neighbors, our pastors, our doctors, whoever, and we come up with a great plan. And that plan is usually how we're going to save ourselves from...something. 

Save ourselves from financial disaster. Save ourselves from death. Save ourselves from heartache. Save ourselves from trouble. 

And listen, sometimes, we have really good plans. We do. We formulate strategies that ought to work, things that make perfect sense to any rational mind. 

But we run right up against the same thing we always do - that there's only one perspective that matters, and it ain't ours. It's God's. 

God is the one who has to approve this whole thing. God is the one who has to make it work. God is the one who gives it the go-ahead. 

And God...is not interested in all the ways we've come up with to save ourselves. 

Because God is the only one who can save us. 

He knows that. We know that. He knows that we know that, even when we seem to have forgotten. That's why it seems that the more plans we come up with to save ourselves, the more God steps in and foils our plans so that we remember what we have forgotten - God alone can save us. God alone does save us. 

Praise the Lord.