When I went to the store recently, much of the parking lot was blocked off in a large square reserved for a construction project.

After finishing shopping, I began to pull away in my vehicle when I saw a man maybe 15 yards away waving his arms at me to stop.

“Does there happen to be an orange cone underneath my car?” I asked.

He stared at me, incredulously.

“You’re not going to tell my husband about this, are you?”

“I didn’t see nothing.”

I knew he was a good egg by the way he was waving his arms for my sake.

Soon a store employee had made his way over to me. He pulled the traffic cone out from under my car and sent me on my merry way.

But whoever originally drove my vehicle over the traffic cone (not me) caused me to head into construction jail with a boundary of only orange cones. With no way out, I drove around in a large square until the same store employee again spotted me and ran over to remove cones to permit my exit.

“It just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?”

“I got you,” he said.

***

It’s funny–in a curious and strange kind of way–how God’s kind hand is all over this world. And I can certainly on heavy days want to holler why aren’t You, Lord? Especially when my prayers aren’t being responded to like I think they should or particularly in the speed my matters seem to warrant. I can joke about the stranger and store employee who refused to let me be, but the reality is we have a God who has done the same for us.

And what if He does let us drive into the valley of the shadow of death? What if He doesn’t get us out as fast as we want? What if He doesn’t give clarity? And what if we stay there indefinitely?

But for Christ, far worse was our destiny. The cup of wrath is the cup we deserve. And but for the God that wouldn’t let us be, who perhaps has let us venture into places we don’t understand, don’t want, didn’t plan, to mercifully show there is nothing, apart from Him, who can rescue–

–but for that God, we would be left to ourselves. No way out.

In The Problem of Pain, CS Lewis discusses how we sometimes want God to just let us be. Lewis concludes that as objects of God’s love, God’s greatest love is conforming us to His Son.

You may be wrestling with God. Driving around the perimeter of a cone-blocked parking lot. Year after year, wondering if you will only ever be stuck in this loop. Won’t He just lift the traffic cone and let me out! But if you are in fact wrestling, it is only because of God’s merciful hand that you know Him enough to wrestle. We get to wrestle.

More than the stranger in the parking lot or the store employee, God will not let you be. He knows you are where you are. He knows you may have been here for years. He knows exactly what you want from Him. He knows the wrong beliefs you had about Him. He loves you too much to let you stay there.

And aren’t His promises proving all the more sure when facts look unsure? And aren’t they sturdier than you knew they were years before you didn’t have to stand on them? And don’t you know God more than you did when you thought you knew everything? And don’t you submit more to God when you’re shaken awake to wrestle Him instead of believing it’s old hat?

That you are increasingly aware of your helplessness, no exit in sight, is part of God conforming you to Christ. Apart from Him, we can do nothing. We are at His mercy and that we are is also our greatest hope. We know nobody as loving as He!

In Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place, Casper Ten Boom asks daughter Corrie, when do I give you your ticket when it’s time to go to Amsterdam? She responds, just before we get on the train. To which Casper responds, our Father in heaven knows just when we’re going to need things at certain times, and we shouldn’t run ahead of Him.

If our loving Father knows how bad we want to be out of the waiting, the wrestling, the wanting, and He seemingly delays, then He must be working something better. If God lifts the traffic cone immediately. And if He doesn’t. If the valley is not raised up. If the mountain is not made low. Hasn’t He given Christ for us? Then we absolutely trust Him with any delays, withholding, or our lack of understanding.

Lord, give every one of us the desire to engage You amid wherever we are today. You are able!

“Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, in truth and love.” (2 John 1:3 ESV).

“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are…” (1 John 3:1 ESV).

“He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32 ESV).

***

Thanks for reading, my friend. Hope to write more regularly this next year–so please say a prayer for me and how that looks.

Paige