This week I am having to drop my daughter off for a summer class in the morning. This has put me in the office 2 hours later than I usually arrive, and this morning as I was waiting for my coffee at Starbucks — rush, rush, rush — I could not believe how slow everyone was moving, as if they had no cares at all about my schedule. I find these same people in every line I fall into — grocery store checkouts, ATM’s, service desks.
I have also noticed that when I am trying to relax — rest, rest, rest — everybody else around me is frantic and bothering me. They ask me to do things. They make requests, interrupt my introversion, leave little piles of duty around my feet.
I can only come to one of two conclusions about my frustration over this inevitable fact of life: either I am the center of the universe and you all don’t know, or — I am not the center of the universe and I am upset that you all know.
I wake up this way. I bet you do too. We wake up in self-sovereignty mode. Then we get frustrated because we keep running into people who think they’re the center of the universe. It’s frustrating.
What a splendid mercy, even if a severe one, then, when Jesus gives us a hard shove out of our own makeshift thrones, and all the little planets we’ve set in orbit around us fall down — thump. thump. thump. thump. thump.
Where were you when I established the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
— Job 38:4
