Confessions of a Control Freak

I admit it!

I like control.  Love it, actually.  Crave it!  Want it!  Need it!  (Excuse me as I stop to straighten the bar stools around my kitchen table.)

The desire for control is my daily struggle.  After all, who better to trust in than myself. 

Right? 

I totally get the Little Red Hen’s point of view – I’ll do it myself!  At least then it’ll get done… and get done the way I want!

Ahh… but who am I to control the chaos of the world around me?  It is impossible… and the worries of it drive me to the brink. 

Then my Creator reminds me to look up.  He invites me to fall back into His care and relinquish the control into His capable hands.

So I look up.  I look to the One who created all things.  I look to the One who formed an earth that is 25,000 miles in circumference. It weighs 13,227,735,730,800,000,000,000,000 pounds (I don’t even know how to say that). 

And yet it hangs in empty space!

It spins at 1000 miles an hour with perfect balance in an orbit of 580 million miles… and does so at just the right angle to create the seasons we have.

And I wanted to be in control?

I look around the earth today and think I have a better take on how history should play out.  I argue with God Almighty when He leads in a different direction.  I doubt His wisdom. 

Yet He is the One who created each of us with a brain that has 100 thousand billion electrical connections (read that out loud)- in other words, more electrical connections than all the electrical appliances on the face of the earth!

Yeah.  Ok!

Not only that, our brains can fit in a quart jar and operate for eighty-some years on ten watts of power fueled by chocolate and Pepsi!

I question where He is, why I don’t see His hand at work, and what He is doing, yet creation daily reminds us that He is a God of order and accuracy.

For example:

-the eggs of the potato bug hatch in 7 days

-the eggs of a canary - 14 days

-those of the barnyard hen - 21 days

-the eggs of geese hatch in 28 days

-the eggs of the mallard - 35 days

-the parrot and the ostrich? - 42 days

(Notice, they are all divisible by seven, the number of days in a week!)

We see His accuracy in produce:

-Each watermelon has an even number of strips on the rind.

-Each orange has an even number of segments.

-Each ear of corn has an even number of rows.

-Each stalk of wheat has an even number of grains.

-Every bunch of bananas has on its lowest row an even number of bananas, and each row decreases by one, so that one row has an even number and the next row an odd number.

Shall I go on?

The waves of the sea roll in on shore twenty-six to the minute - in all kinds of weather!

Or how about this?  If the average person had all the space squeezed out of him, he’d be lost on the head of a pin and occupy just one one-hundred millionth of a cubic inch.

So much for thinking we’re something.

Wow.

Isaiah 40 says it best (read this out loud.  You’ll love it!):

Who has scooped up the ocean

in His two hands,

or measured the sky

between His thumb and little finger?

Who has put all the earth’s dirt in one of His baskets,

Weighed each mountain and hill?

Who could ever have told God what to do

or taught Him His business?

What expert would He have gone to for advice?

What school would He attend to learn justice?

What God do you suppose might have taught Him what He knows,

 Showed Him how things work?

Why, the nations are but a drop in a bucket,

A mere smudge on a window…

All the nations add up to simply nothing before Him—

less than nothing is more like it.

A minus…

Have you not been paying attention?
    

Have you not been listening?


Haven’t you heard these stories all your life?
    

Don’t you understand the foundation of all things?


God sits high above the round ball of earth.
    

The people look like mere ants.


He stretches out the skies like a canvas—
    

yes, like a tent canvas to live under.


He ignores what all the princes say and do.
    

The rulers of the earth count for nothing.


Princes and rulers don’t amount to much.
    

Like seeds barely rooted, just sprouted,


They shrivel when God blows on them.
    

Like flecks of chaff, they’re gone with the wind…

“So—who is like Me?
    

Who holds a candle to me?” says The Holy.


Look at the night skies:
    

Who do you think made all this?


Who marches this army of stars out each night,
    

counts them off,

calls each by name


—so magnificent!

so powerful!—
    

…and never overlooks a single one?

Why would you ever complain, O Jacob,
    

or, whine, Israel, saying,
“God has lost track of me.
    

He doesn’t care what happens to me”?


Don’t you know anything?

Haven’t you been listening?


God doesn’t come and go.

God lasts.
    

He’s Creator of all you can see or imagine.


He doesn’t get tired out,

Doesn’t pause to catch His breath.
    

And He knows everything,

inside and out.

My God calculated all these things.  And this same God is the One who has planned your life and mine. 

So why should I worry?  Why do I fear?  Why must I white-knuckle my way through life?

His wisdom, His plans… His control far exceeds any puny efforts I might attempt to navigate my way through this world.

His control doesn’t come and go.

It is accurate.

It is sure.

And it lasts.