Connecting the Dots...

I watched Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford last night (thanks Alex) and was blown away by the amount of wisdom that was contained in those brief 15 minutes. One of the things that really resonated with me was the idea of connecting the dots. Steve spoke about taking a Calligraphy course in college (after he dropped out) that he had no intention of using, it just interested him. The, years later, as he was designing Mac (if that's even what it was called back then) everything he learned in that course came back to him and he was able to use the beautiful writing style he had learned. He went on to say that you cannot connect the dots looking forwards, only looking back...there was no way for him to know that he was going to use that course to help create one of the most influential corporations our nation would ever see...BUT, looking back, it all made sense.

I've realized that I have a tendency to want to connect the dots looking ahead. I want to understand how everything fits together, I want to understand why God has me going through whatever season He has me going through. But, see, it doesn't work that way.

Here in San Fran, things have been going well but it's been different than any experience I've had before. It's taking time to build relationships and to determine what activities/groups to get involved in (whereas before, I'd just rush into the first few things that seemed really cool), I feel like I'm doing a lot more waiting on the Lord and less actively pursuing things in my life--it's weird (and a bit scary). It's funny what happens when you start to slow down-when you start relying on God for more and on yourself less--it's a bit nerve-wracking but also really exciting. It's also kinda hard to figure out how much we are supposed to take care of and how much we are supposed to trust God for. I keep trying to figure out what He has planned--why am I living where I'm living? Why am I in the school I'm in or a part of the church I'm a part of? What lesson is there to learn? Who am I supposed to meet? I keep looking for clues and making guesses (guesses which are oftentimes wrong, I might add) and He just says, "trust me."

God's word says that His ways are not my ways and His thoughts are not my thoughts. Haha no kidding. Yet I still try to understand Him--why He does what He does (or doesn't' do what I think He should). And I think that's okay. I think He wants us to know Him in that way. But I also think that, sometimes, He calls us to just trust Him, to just let ourselves go through whatever He's put before us, not worry now about the reason for it and, after it's all said and done, it'll make some sense. AND, we'll get to experience Him on a whole new level...how cool is that :o)