Lean Not On Your Own Understanding

 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5)

This is my "life verse."  I have spent a great deal of time over the years focusing on those first words - "trust" and "all" especially.  It's that second line that trips me up.  When God has said one thing, and my eyes see something else going on, it's hard to remember that "it ain't over till it's over" and God doesn't always take a direct route to the end result.  And there's a reason and a purpose for that.

For some reason probably related to that second line, I noticed a recurrent cycle in my reading of the Old Testament: God performed miracles, then made promises, and His people didn't believe those promises despite His faithful past, they went their own way and sinned, suffered the consequences, repented, and then the whole cycle repeated itself again.  Despite God always making good on His promises, His people looked instead to what they saw with their eyes and chose not to believe Him.  They grumbled against Him when things looked impossible.  I don't think it's coincidence that He brought those instances to my attention.

I interrupted my normal Bible reading schedule to jump to the book of Luke in celebration of the Christmas season.  Right away, in the first Chapter, I noticed something related to this - two back-to-back contrasting examples of how to react to God's promises of the seemingly impossible.

Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth, both elderly, were told by the angel Gabriel that they would have a son.  Gabriel also visited a young virgin, Mary, and told her she would also bear a son.  Zacharias heard this news knowing his wife was too old to bear children, and asked for proof.  Mary heard this news knowing she was a virgin and asked how it was going to happen.  

Gabriel saw fit to explain the process to Mary, but often we don't get that explanation, only the instruction to "lean not on your own understanding."  That's hard.  Sometimes it's really hard, when our eyes - and often the people around us - tell us the opposite.  God is cognizant of our humanness and our imperfect faith, but we pay a price when we put more faith in what we see over God's promises.  The Old Testament examples show that, and Zacharias lost his ability to speak until the promise was fulfilled.  And there's always a blessing when we are able to trust the Lord even when our circumstances might indicate otherwise.  Mary found favor with God and is most blessed among women.  God is always faithful.  He keeps His promises.  Always.  Even when we can't see how.