God and the Literary Device.

A week ago yesterday my phone vibrates. It’s a text from my friend Ky, “Starting my day with Audrey!” it reads. You know, Audrey Assad, she’s a one-namer in our book. She’s just that good.

But actually I had gone months with out listening to her. Until the next day. It was this song on repeat. While cleaning the kitchen. Running errands. 

Sunday morning it was in my head. 

Sitting in church, listening to a sermon on the Lord’s Prayer, I was thinking of the millions of situations in life that I try to reason with God about. I try to convince Him of things. As if He hasn’t already planned it. 

There I am thinking. Your will be done. Not mine. 

"If Everything is Yours God, I’m letting it go. It was never mine to hold." 

Monday morning. 5am. The alarm goes off. I lay in bed - not wanting to get up. Speaking to myself, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done. On earth as it is in heaven. 

I finally get up, brush my teeth. Throw on a hoodie. I’m scrambling for my Bible when I hear a knock on the door. Imagination, I think. I’m half way down the stairs to make a pot of coffee and I hear pounding, beating on the door. I wake up my roommate. The other one gets up too. There we are. Three scared little girls in front of the police officer before us. 

My neighbor had backed into my car. My car. 

No, it’s God’s car. 

Everything is Yours God and I’m letting it go.

Your kingdom come. Your will be done. 

He knew this would happen. He knew it years ago. 

So I’m letting it go. 

And I don’t know what’s next. 

I don’t know if God brought a dented bumper into my life to remind me that everything is His. And that I’m just a steward. And he can take anything - ANYTHING - away at any moment. 

I don’t know if it’s because He wanted to show me that nothing. No possession. No car that I now love should have preeminence in my life. 

I don’t know if it's show me what it looks like to make God look good in a seemingly not good - not fun- situation. 

I don’t know if it was to make the Lord’s Prayer reality in my life. 

But I do know, as Scott Rodin writes in his book The Steward Leader something like this: I am content to live my story because I trust its author. 

And so, once the kind police man had gone. 

I am make coffee. 

I sit down. 

I open up my Bible and start where I had stopped the day before.

“Let everyone beware of his neighbor and put no trust in any brother...” Jeremiah 9:4

Although, out of context, surely God has a sense of humor. 

I cannot think of another story in my life at the moment with more foreshadowing, satire, irony than this one.  

That’s how a good Writer writes. 

P.S: These people are good. Download their music for free. Here’s some more irony to add to the fire.