“… since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” (Col. 3:9-10 NIV)
“In order to install recommended updates, you must restart your computer.” That’s the message that greeted me this morning. One of my quirks is that I try to relate everything to my faith journey; this message was no exception!
There are times that God says the same thing to me about my life: “in order to install the updates that I have planned for you, you have to start over.” In order for my computer to restart, it has to first shut down. When I’m aware that it is going to happen, I can prepare by making sure that all of my documents are properly saved and filed and programs are closed ahead of time to save time during the restart. There are times, however, when I miss the warning and the computer just begins shutting down as I am working. The same thing happens to me in life. Occasionally, I see the signs that God has different plans for me. At those times I can close out some things that I have going in my life in order to embrace the changes that God has planned. More often than not, however, I miss or ignore the warnings and things start shutting down before my eyes and I don’t know why.
I notice that when my computer is restarting unexpectedly, it takes longer for it to shut down than it does for it to start again. There are times when I really don’t want to restart the computer and I select the delay option. In life, my stubbornness can cause me to take a very long time to let go of something that I thought was important so I delay the restart as many times as I can. God keeps working and working to prepare me for rebooting, but I can put up quite a fight sometimes. Fortunately for me, God is very patient and persistent and shuts down my humanly self-centered plans one way or another; He even hits force restart if needed. After shutting down, there is always a period of waiting. For my computer, I’m waiting for it to configure so that it can restart; in my life, I’m mourning what I lost or being angry because it was taken away and finally accepting God’s Will. Once I finally shut down, it takes no time at all for God to restart me and show me what He has planned. After I have gone through the entire process, I see how much better the updates to my life are and wonder why I took so long to restart!
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