Ok, so this week, I've become especially aware how frustrated I get at life's common, daily trials. I get unusually 'offended'. I act put out (in an odd sort of way). Basically, I want all of life's blessings and excessively detest any form of evil that gets in my way. This is just one more manifestation of selfishness, to say it plainly. Selfishness is a form of self-worship. I (and we) was the world to revolve around us, to glorify us.
Now, here's some reality: the anger or frustration is a rejection of God's wisdom in arranging THIS kind of world, full of setbacks, delays, and daily trials. When people talk of suffering, death, and cancer, we cite Romans 8:28; yet when small things hit us, we are so unprepared. We get angry that so many "trivial" things would get in the way of what 's "really" important (i.e. whatever WE are doing). Yet, today, it dawned on me how trivial our days are in God's eyes. He is sovereign and all-knowing. Our ambitions and challenges are nothing for Him.
However, the incarnation reveals a God, whose glory is made manifest in mercy, "put up with" our humanity and inefficient world. In His wisdom, such a world system works together for our good and His glory. In the most profound sense, all evil and pain exists so that Christ might die, thus exhibiting God's glorious grace (cp. Rev. 13:8, Eph. 1:6). As Paul suggests in 2 Cor. 4, our lives are to be small expressions of His gospel-incarnation.
This should radically impact the way we impatiently listen to the "trivial concerns" of our kids. All our lives are full of normal, trivial stuff...that is, until that point we remember the gospel is precisely God's enjoying us amid our trivial concerns.
