Sometime ago, I read something that God provides instructions as we go and gives us little pieces of a puzzle as we go through and as we need them.
Yesterday I took my daughter to an aquarium, and they were to have a dolphin show at a certain time. We were about an hour before it was set to start. The person at the front desk gave these set of instructions: at 6:45 you can start lining up on the bridge for the 7:00pm show. When I got around to the bridge, it was still only about 5:50 and there was a restaurant across the way, overlooking the pool below with 6 beautiful dolphins swimming around. Before I asked for a seat, I asked if I’d be able to see the show from there – the seats overlooked the pool and was right across from the bridge that we were told to meet – the guy answered that I wouldn’t. I couldn’t understand that if we were right over the pool, of the bridge where we were to line up, how could we not see the show. So, because I didn’t like that answer, I asked someone else a few minutes later. Hmmm. The answer had not changed in 15 minutes – I would still not be able to see from my amazing seat overlooking the dolphins in the pool.
Ok – people were lining up on the bridge, and I was almost done eating. From where we were, I would almost have a front space in the line, I decided to follow instructions. Surprisingly, after I turned over my ticket and started to follow the line, there was a whole other area that we were taken to, that I had not been able to see from my previous vantage point. But guess what? The guy at the door knew, and he’d given me enough of the instructions to get me to the end point. Had I stayed in my cozy seat overlooking the dolphin pool, I would have seen 6 beautiful dolphins swimming and playing around, but when I followed the instructions I was given, I saw the main event. There were 3 dolphins who had been trained for just the purpose of providing an amazing show that had both my daughter and I on the edge of our almost front row seats. We even got the pre show of a sea-lion.
While I had waited the almost hour to see the show, I would have missed it had I not followed the instructions because I could not see what lay before me. Sometimes God gives us what we consider to be partial instructions and expects us to follow. It’s human nature to not trust what we can’t see in front of us, but God wants us to trust Him that He can see the entire situation ahead, and all we need to do is to take the first step.
Dear Heavenly Father, help us to trust you that you know the beginning from the end and you can see what we cannot. Help us not to lean unto our own understanding but in everything we do, to acknowledge you.