Two or three years ago, Lindsey received a hippo blanket for her birthday. It was made by friends of ours and is hot pink, yellow, and fuzzy, with colorful, happy-looking hippos all over it. At the time, Lindsey couldn’t say “hippo”, so she came up with “hempo”.
She still loves that thing and often takes it with her when she thinks she might be cold somewhere. The other day, she gathered it up as she prepared to get out of our minivan. The only thing was, she was also holding everything else she’d brought along with her, which made quite a load. “Kenny, help your sister with her stuff,” I directed.
Right behind her, Kenny reached for the blanket, which was trailing on the floor. As soon as Lindsey felt him pull on it, she glanced back at him to see what he was doing. Right about the time I was saying, “He’s just trying to help you,” Lindsey realized the same thing on her own and released the blanket, turning her attention away from him and back to getting out.
It made all the difference in the world that she knew he was trying to help her. Otherwise, you can imagine how the scenario would have gone—about as well as when God tries to take something from us and we don’t like it.
There are times in every believer’s life when God must take something away from us as part of His plan. We feel His tug on our treasure, and we immediately try to figure out what God is doing. Sometimes, it’s obvious, but oftentimes, we can’t tell. And it’s during those times that it matters so much whether we think He is trying to steal something that is rightfully ours or to remove it for our benefit.
Some things in life, we’re just not willing to give up. We feel as if we’re entitled to them. We want to maintain control over them, and if God tries to take them away—or if He allows them to be taken away—we react as if He has stolen from us. The only problem with that reasoning is that ultimately, nothing belongs to us. It’s all His. We don’t have the right to hang onto anything He takes or allows to be taken from us because it’s all His in the first place.
The job we lost? It was never ours to hang on to. Our health? Nope, not that either. Our kids? Even they don’t truly belong to us. They are and always have been His.
Most of the time, however, the things God requires us to give up are not the truly precious things—family, for instance. Usually it’s something much smaller, such as a portion of our free time or a peaceful, uninterrupted night’s sleep. Frequently, God takes these things from us because He wants to replace them with an opportunity to serve other people such as our children. But too often, instead of willingly accepting the change in plans, we resent the fact that mothering is often inconvenient.
What do you resent? Many times, resentment is an indicator that something we believe we have a right to has been taken from us. We resent the fact that our husband wants to watch the ballgame instead of help us with the children because we believe we have a right to his help, and that “right” has been stolen from us. Or we begrudge the fact that we have to get up in the middle of the night to tend to our coughing child because we thought we had a right to a good night’s sleep.
What difference might it make in your life and in mine if we were to lay down our rights and realize that we don’t have a right to anything? Instead of focusing on our “rights” that haven’t been fulfilled, what if we started meditating on all the things we do have that we don’t have a right to because they are the result of God’s grace?
Why not make a list of those things? Write down all the things you do have that you don’t have a right to—in other words, all the blessings you now enjoy that were gifts from God based on His love for you and not on what you had a “right” to.
It’s humbling, isn’t it? Realizing that God owes us nothing yet still chooses to bless us anyway—it’s incredible. That He would give us anything at all should amaze us. Yet He pours out His love on us, and as part of His love, He blesses us with gifts.
Let’s not spend more time resenting what we don’t have than rejoicing in what we do have. After all, if God gave us what we deserved on our own merits, we’d all be in hell. Literally. So instead of virtually accusing Him of stealing from us—or at least of doing the wrong thing—let’s thank Him for what He has done that’s truly unfair: lavishing us with blessings we don’t deserve.
1 Corinthians 4:7—What do you have that you did not receive?
James 1:17—Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.