43. Lima Beans and Freight Trains

If you have kids, or if your sibling has kids, or if you ever babysat kids you know one thing for certain: kids like sweet things. Candy, cupcakes, gumballs. My daughter Courtney learned the fine art of faking a cough by the time she was four so she could have a hit of the yummy sweet red stuff Mom poured into a spoon. In the mind of a little kid there is absolutely nothing wrong with living off sweets: they know nothing about cavities or chocolate tummy aches, nor do they care. We, on the other hand, are all too aware of the consequences of devouring an entire econo-pak of jelly beans so we say NO.  Not only do we say NO, but in the same breath we say YOU ARE ARE GOING TO EAT LIMA BEANS TONIGHT WITH YOUR DINNER, because we want the child to grow strong healthy bones, not big painful cavities.

God is the adult. We are the child. Not only is God the adult, he is a RESPONSIBLE adult. He knows what is best for us, even when we have no clue. Nothing is more difficult to grasp than this truth when our world has fallen apart, but we must hold onto the knowledge that our Creator wants us to eat good food and grow.  There really is hope for us when we're stuck eating lima beans. If the path we're on for a time is keeping us from growing; if we've been pigging out on jujubes, rest assured he cares enough about us to take them away and serve us up some lima beans instead, not so we can wrinkle our nose and hang our head, but so we can grow, prosper, and flourish!

 

Along these lines, God showed me a cool lesson one day while I was observing a freight train in the Colombia River Gorge.
I was traveling east on Interstate 84 next to the wide, blue Columbia River. On the other side of the river, a long freight train was also heading east at about the same speed. It was the first time I had ever seen a moving freight train from end to end in it's entirety.  As I pondered this, God spoke to my heart saying, the train you see there is like someone's lifetime. There is a beginning and an end. Each car represents one year of the lifetime. As it moves down the track, a tiny ant is making its way over each and every car.  The ant started at the front of the train and it will finish its journey at the last car.  Each time the ant crosses onto another car it will have passed another year.

The ant cannot comprehend much of whichever car it is on, and it certainly cannot even begin to comprehend the entire train.  You, however, are able to see the entire train, from beginning to end, from your vantage point across the river.  You can see where the ant is headed and where it's been. You can see every car; every year, of it's journey.

God is sitting at the seat in which I sat that day, observing the train with its little ant. He knows where we've been and where we are headed. He knows exactly how many cars are on our train and what obstacles lie on each car. We may not be able to see past the end of our nose in terms of an entire lifetime, but we can take great comfort knowing that God does.

I do not know which car I'm traveling on right now, but it sure seems like a long one. I'm so thankful to know, however, that my Creator is across the river, watching me travel down the track, beginning to end.