I have a wonderfully endearing little cat. She's clean, she's quiet and in the evenings she snuggles on my lap and purrs contentedly making me feel loved and adored. BUT, on the rare occasion that she has to go the vet and I have to get her into her cage, the beast comes out from nowhere and the battle is on! I only have two hands and she has four legs. It's a lopsided battle from the start. As I put my one hand on her back legs and use the other to hold open the cage door she widens her front paws to hang onto the sides of the cage as if her life depended on it. It takes minutes of cajoling, coaxing and coming precariously close to a cuss word before I can get her inside. She then flattens her ears to her head and yowls at me. Such is life with a cat.
It's for her own good, of course. I know that and I sometimes like to imagine that she knows that too. But it doesn't stop the protesting and and her refusal to surrender.
We can be like that too, can't we? How many times has God tried to move us in a direction that is good for us and how many times have we ignored His voice and gone our own way? We may hear Him but for some unfathomable reason we resist following, preferring instead to go off on our own. We know better, right? Wrong!
Thank goodness God is so patient with us and never forces His will on us. He stands patiently by waiting for us to come to the inevitable conclusion that His way is the only way, and that we can't do it without Him. And no matter how long we wait to ask, He always answers. Eventually we surrender ourselves to His will and, even if later on we are back to clinging to that cage fighting to go our own way, we will come back to the path yet again.
Psalm 32:8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.
'Til next time
