When Your Best Isn't Good Enough

Slightly embarrassing confession.
I am the world's worst package opener. No, really. Any kind of pre-packaged package--from frozen chicken to graham crackers to individual drink packets ends up evolving into a puzzle box of epic proportions, resulting in facial contortions, grunts, and possibly torn ligaments. Eventually, frustration takes over.
Queue Mission Impossible theme song.
Out come the knives. Annnnndddddd in another 5 minutes, the package has been completely mutilated but is finally open. And the bags that say "resealable"? Ha. Who are they kidding.

The past couple months have felt like a series of packages handed to me...with abysmal results.
I've gritted my teeth, thrown my bulging biceps into the fray, and given it all I've got.
But it hasn't been good enough.
In one series of events after another, my best hasn't been good enough.

Typically, my experience in life has been...work hard enough, study hard enough, prepare well enough, pray it through, and whatever you're striving for can be accomplished. Obviously that's not always the case, but more often than not it seemed to hold true. Until 6 months ago. One failure precipitated another. And another. It was a little bit bewildering and not a little bit discouraging.
And then I started sliding into the vortex of God's Sovereignty/Man's Will. As Christians are wont to do, I tried reconciling my circumstances with the will of God. And lots of people said, "God has something better for you."

I always appreciate people's good intentions. However, I sometimes wonder if we shift things on God that aren't necessarily His department. When we see ourselves as "successful", we tend to believe this must be God's will. And when we're not, we console ourselves that whatever we were working toward wasn't His will. But really--What if I didn't prepare well enough? What if I actually bombed that second interview because I didn't do enough research? God certainly allows things to happen daily that are nowhere close to being in His will.

The tension between God's Sovereignty and Man's Will is a never ending enigma that I of all people will not attempt to reconcile. But as I was sitting in church yesterday thinking through God's action or lack of action in my life, the Spirit brought something to mind that gave a lot of clarity.
I was focused on what He was doing (or not doing), and not Who He is. And that tiny clarification brought comfort and peace to my perplexed mind.

"I Am Not Skilled to Understand, What God Has Willed, What God Has Planned..." as the song goes.
Maybe these failures I've experienced were a result of God's direct intervention. Or maybe they've been my fault in human error. Either way, what matters is that I know and am confident of Who He is in every twist and turn of life.

Psalm 107 outlines four different scenarios in which humans find themselves in extremely difficult situations. Some of them experiencing their own consequences of sin, some of them just living the circumstances of life.
But regardless the scenario, God's response toward each of them is the same.
"Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress."
Among the many attributes of our God is His steadfast love.

Life is hard. Relationships are hard. Sin is hard.
But the hope, the joy, the freedom of life lies in the character of God:
His steadfast love endures forever.
He is for us, never against us.
He is our Comforter, our Healer.
He is our Teacher.

And so...it's ok that my best isn't good enough. It's ok that I'm not sure why things happen, why relationships are so hard, why God doesn't answer some prayers.
It's ok because there's a God Whose character I can trust, no matter what.

"Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things; let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord."

Grace and Peace,

RB