I've heard this analogy before, but it really hit home when I could somewhat imagine how this feels. The analogy has to due with how God's relationship with us can be like a child and a father. We are his children so it makes sense, but I am more so focused on the negative aspects of the children. Let me explain.
I was spending time with God on my way home from work this evening and thought about this analogy, and compared it to the work I do. (I work with kids with Autism, if that was something you didn't know about me yet.) I thought about the kids I worked with, and how they each illustrate a different aspect of this. One of the girls I work with particularly annoyed me today, because she wouldn't listen, and instead was super sassy towards me. Sometimes I'll have given her the answer to a question, and she'll still wonder what the answer is. To avoid doing work she'll ask me the same questions over and over again, but won't answer the questions I ask of her without a lot of prompting. Lastly she apologizes for misbehaving, but seconds later does the thing she apologized for.
What's that have to do with God? It depicts God's patience with us. He's not angry with us, he has a lot of patience. I feel like I have a lot of patience, but today was hard. God might plainly give us an answer to a question. It should be frustrating to him if he puts something in plain sight but we still don't see it. But thank God for his patience. How many times do we ask God questions without listening what he has to say to us? He might be giving us certain questions to ponder, but instead we interrupt him with our own not as important questions. Finally how often do we repent, but wind up going back and doing the thing we just repented of? In a fallen world, it is so, so common.
One of the kids I work with is non-verbal (I work with a few non-verbal kids). He easily gets overwhelmed, starts to freak out of nowhere. When he is having an episode he starts yelling and comes towards you. Usually accompanied by kicking, pinching, or pulling your hair. Usually these episodes are set off by something minor. Today it was not wanting to read anymore. We have techniques to try and get him to calm down, but sometimes it takes awhile. This just reminded me of how in life we sometimes freak out over such minor things. God is right there trying to comfort us, even if we don't feel like he is. He sees that we are upset, and he doesn't want us to be. He wants to help, but we need to let him help us when in these states. Know that we have the power that it takes to overcome.
A common thing among the kids I work with, and probably kids in general is how badly they take the word "no" sometimes. We make our requests known to God, and sometimes he says no in order to protect us, or because he has something better, or it's not the right time yet. Here is an example of something that happened this week.
*One of the girls I work with was stepping on a bottle cap with her bare feet*
Me: Don't do that, the bottlecap is dirty, and we shouldn't play with things we find on the ground, also it is sharp and could cut your foot
Her: *listens but then eventually steps on it again*
Me: (I ended up just taking it away from her, but I was trying to protect her from cutting her feet)
So this was a long ramble but I hope it can help someone out.
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