Delight in the Face of Trouble

 

“Trouble and distress have come upon me, but your commands give me delight.”

—Psalm 119:143

How do you react when trouble comes your way?

I ask because I seem to more and more, at my advanced age, to react to trouble and distress with frustration and anger. I am quite ashamed that I no longer seem to be able to take even the most minor occurrences with the kind of patience and grace that I know God expects of me.

But, I am not content to leave the situation where it is. In fact, I have been praying a great deal of late that God would bring a peaceful calmness into my life.

Every time I think that I have reached a place of stillness, some new “tragedy” occurs. I put that word “tragedy” in quotation marks because the kinds of things that happen to me are so minor that I am even more embarrassed to admit they cause me such angst.

For example, recently, when my wife started the van, a rat-tat-tat-tat sound emanated from the dashboard. It sounded like a baseball card clipped to the spoked wheel of a bicycle. I immediately recognized that something was wrong with the fan for the heating and air conditioning system.

A trip to the dealer informed me that the $60.00 part would take $700.00 in labor to replace because the dashboard had to be removed. The repair would take a day and a half.

A few hours after we had the van back in our possession, a trip to a restaurant resulted in us becoming stuck in the driveway of the establishment with the shift lever apparently disconnected from the transmission and the van stuck in “Park.” I promptly called both the dealer and AAA. Within the hour, a tow truck hauled the van back to the dealer.

In the morning, the dealer called saying they had the car, but no key. The night before, the tow truck operator had said he would lock the car and put the key in the night repair slot at the dealer. The dealer informed me the car was unlocked and they could not find a key. To my chagrin, I realized that my van had sat unlocked in the dealer’s parking lot overnight with my $20,000 powered wheel chair unprotected in the back of the van.

Eventually, the dealer found the key in a slide out drink holder. But, not before my wife had to drive to the dealer with another key.

Then, once the dealer made the repairs—for which they admitted was their fault when reassembling the dashboard two days before—I had to take off my right shoe that has a leg brace attached, put on a brace-less shoe, ride in my wife’s car to the dealer, and drive the van back home.

Now all this seems pretty minor and perhaps even a quite common set of circumstances. I wish I could report that I handled all this with aplomb and a smile.

No—unfortunately I became very frustrated and angry several times during this event. Fortunately, I did not target any person with my anger. The only harm I did was to my own blood pressure and to my own peace of mind.

Yet, I am so very ashamed that I, once again, failed to respond with the kind of peaceful calmness that Jesus would expect of me.

How I wish that, over the 69 years of my life, I had learned how to handle these situations more calmly, so that I could follow the words of the Psalmist, as recorded in Psalm 119:143:

Trouble and distress have come upon me, but your commands give me delight.

I have to chuckle at this verse because trouble and distress never produce delight in me. But, maybe, just maybe, they could.

So, I will once again resubmit myself to God and seek that place of peace in my life that will allow me to act in a more Christ-like way in the future. In my geezer-hood, I am trusting that I will find a place of quiet rest with the attendant ability to handle whatever comes my way without any frustration or anger.

As we begin a new day, it is likely you have a whole different issue that troubles you, an issue with which you struggle, and for which you seek a touch from God.

Let me be so bold to suggest that together we launch out into this day with confidence that God knows what we need to resolve the issues in our lives that concern us. If we put our trust fully in Him, He will surely supply everything we require to truly become His faithful and obedient children.

 

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