Is Cloning the Answer?

No, this is not an opinion piece on cloning or anything scientific at all. This past week I nearly managed to schedule myself at two places at the same time—more than once! I realized what I had done ahead of time so that gave me more than enough time to stew about my predicament because if the times didn’t dovetail correctly, I would be double-booked. Mind you, these were all “good, helpful activities. Nothing frivolous, nor especially for me.

First of all, the Lord reminded me “to be anxious in nothing…” and that He was marching along with me through this morass of activity. Day one went fine but I had two more to go. It’s so awesome to see how God can get His message/assurance across. He used my friend, Allison, who shared with me her own story of time stress for the week, to encourage and bolster my trust in the Lord to navigate smoothly through this flurry of appointments.

The story in the Old Testament of Elisha and his servant in 2 Kings­­­­­­­ 6:15-17 shows the servant absolutely terrified at the number of Syrian raiders coming against Israel (it was a divided kingdom by this time).

Elijah told his servant not to fear. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” When Elijah asked God to open his servant’s eyes, he saw “the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around.”  The story had a miraculous, favorable ending for Israel--and I had three days of busy-ness that dovetailed together beautifully.

I use that story to say, I don’t know how the Lord does it, seemingly stretching my time in a day or showing me little nooks and crannies of time to use, but I praise Him for however He does it. He IS after all, the Creator of time and space, which makes Him the ultimate time management Teacher.

We have been using Ann Voskamp’s book, The Greatest Gift for our Discipleship class on Sunday mornings. This week one of the devotionals was about Jonah, God’s prophet who didn’t want to give his murderous enemies, the people of Nineveh, a chance to repent and turn to God.

 Jonah decided he would run from God (he had a lot to learn, huh), so he boarded a ship for Tarshish, traveling the exact opposite direction. In the ensuing storm which Jonah came to realize was for his “benefit”, he also realized he needed to vacate the ship to save his innocent shipmates. Here comes the part I love.

At that moment, God took “hold of Jonah’s wet, disoriented face and flat out startles him with the gift of utter dependence. Jonah-days chase your for tender reason. The Hound of Heaven storms after you till you have the gift you need.”

This is merely one life lesson we can extract from Jonah’s story, but it’s one for which I’m grateful to be reminded. Jesus is interested in my moment by moment focus on Him, rather than my worry about details. Not that the details are unimportant, but dependence on Him smooths the way for all the details to fail into place, seamlessly.