The Unwanted Gift — A LifeWords Devotion

By David ReayFriday 25 Nov 2022LifeWords DevotionalsDevotionsReading Time: 2 minutes

A Chinese poet once wrote of asking God for beautiful flowers and in return receiving a thorny cactus bush. And of asking God for a beautiful butterfly but instead getting ugly worms. He wrote of his disappointment and anger. But in time, the cactus blossomed and the worms turned to butterflies. His prayers were answered.

We might feel similarly when our prayers for the desired one thing seem to be answered with an unwanted other thing. It might take time for us to see what may be a blessing in disguise. In the meantime, it will cause us to realise God is not a cosmic vending machine from whom we invariably get what we want if we will only put a coin of faith in the slot.

We trust God to do what is best, rather than assuming he will grant our every desire. This doesn’t mean a lack of struggle or an absence of pain. It is so often very hard to discern what the “good” might be in our present circumstances.

And we need to avoid attributing to God all that is happening in our life. He is never the source of evil. Not all that happens is good; but God is good. Circumstances might be bad, but he will be good. We may not understand what is happening, but trust he knows what is happening. Faith means we trust him to sustain us and never leave our side.

Hard though it may be, we learn to do what the old hymn describes as “tracing the rainbow through the rain.” The bedrock reality in life is not the badness of life situations but the goodness of God.

Blessings

David