Going to Work with Dad
Craig shared with me about an Uprooting Anger class he is teaching in a maximum security prison in Florida. After the second class, one of the men told him that he isn’t sure he believes there is a God.
Craig assured him that it was ok for him to attend the class if he didn’t believe in God, but told him, “Just keep your mind open.” The inmate assured him he would and Craig was grateful for the interchange.
The next week, the same man shared that he’d gotten in a fight that week, and said he was ready to kill a man, but “I think God stopped me.”
He went on to describe that he had his hand around a man’s throat and was ready to squeeze, to choke him to death. But, just at that moment somebody from the Uprooting Anger class broke up the fight.
Craig then learned that the fight had just happened. The inmate was still shaking from it.
He rejoiced at the work of God to prevent a murder, at the evidence of the Lord at work in the life of the young man, and that the young man gave God credit for stopping him.
I told him that I appreciated his faithfulness to go into prisons as a representative of the Lord, carrying hope and life to the men there.
Craig said, “I feel like a little boy going to work with his dad. He tells me that He’ll do the work, and I can sit and watch.”
As a child I joined my father in his woodworking shop. I was occasionally allowed to steady the other end of the board or to pick up wood scraps off the floor, but I understood that Daddy did the work, and I watched. I might get hurt or mess up the project if I got in the way.
How much more is that true with my heavenly father? How often have I rushed in to make adjustments in the people or the circumstances around me and only created more problems?
I can’t understand or fix the hearts of those close to me—my husband, or my children—much less others that cross my path. Who am I to try to fix things in somebody else’s life when I have a Father who is a Master builder—and a repairer of things broken. He is Savior and Redeemer and He told us that our ways are not His ways.
Oh, to learn what it means to get up every morning and go to work with Dad and watch Him as He works.
Have you gotten in the way of what God is doing by trying to help Him out? Have you learned the joy of being still and watching Him at work?
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