Accept the way God does things, for who can straighten what he has made crooked?
Ecclesiastes 7:13 (NLT)
When I was in academy, our coach used to make us run a lap or two around the track to warm us up for PE class. To me, running in a circle around a track was boring. I’d much rather be playing a team sport. So, one day, a couple of friends and I decided to take a short cut when we thought the coach wasn’t looking. Rather than completing our two laps, we cut across the middle of the field and only did half-laps. We cheated. We were laughing because we didn’t have to run the stupid track anymore. That is, until we heard the coach’s whistle blow and realized that he was staring right at us. He called us over and, because we were varsity athletes, decided to make an example out of us for cheating. He made us run wind-sprints on the football field. If you’ve never had the pleasure of this activity, let me break it down.
Wind-sprints consist of you starting at the end zone of the football field and running as fast as you can to the next line on the field, touching it, then running back to the end zone. You then run to the next line down the field, and return to the end zone. Essentially, you have to touch every line (there are 12 of them by the way) while running back and forth as fast as you can. They’re called wind-sprints because you lose your wind (and sometimes your lunch).
It turns out that shortcuts never really turn out the way we want them to. Maybe in the short run things seem to be better. But in the long run, they only cause problems. When it comes to our spiritual life, this is an absolute truth. Cheaters neve prosper.
King Solomon, who was a pretty wise dude, put it like this, “Accept the way God does things, for who can straighten what he has made crooked?” In other words, there are no shortcuts in the Kingdom of God. As God leads us, His route through life and into Heaven is always the best route. But we humans tend to question His route. We often times seek a shortcut which will require less work. That’s the issue. We begin to question His motives, His ways, His directions. We think we know better than God.
Instead of trying to be God, we need to accept that it is His job to lead, and our job to follow. We must accept His route – His way of doing things – and quit trying to cheat our way into eternity.
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