However, I can't really justify this feeling - God uses all situations to teach us something new, and I want to share a simple observation that anyone who's milked cows takes for granted (and is often irritated by!)...I just love how the Lord of all creation speaks through tiny everyday occurrences and brings vibrant colour and joy to something that is otherwise a source of annoyance and gloom!
For those of you who haven't ever been in a modern milking parlour, let me give you a visual of the most common type, called a herringbone parlour: there are 2 floor-level platforms where the cows file in, usually 8, 10, or 20 a side, and a sunken pit in the middle where the milker stands. The milker has control of the front and back gates, and there is also often a feed computer which will dispense the correct amount of cow nuts (or "cake" as the dairy industry calls it) into each cow's feed trough. So, the first part of the milking routine is the milker opening the back gate, the first cow coming onto the platform, and the milker punching the cow's number into the feed computer so her feed will pour down into the first feed trough. As the second and third cows come in, the milker can see their numbers and also enter them into the computer, and so the line of cows are fed as they enter the parlour, before their teats can be cleaned and the milking units put on.
Some cows are either keen to be milked or very trusting - they know the feed is coming, so they march straight in and wait at their trough til the feed appears. But some hang back until they can hear feed falling down into the troughs, which is highly annoying as it slows down milking when you have to wait for cows to make up their minds to come in, and even more so if you have to constantly scramble up and down the steps at the back of the parlour to push the cows in yourself! One day I was struck by how close a resemblance this bears to us humans - isn't it often the case that we don't want to trust God's provision until He's proven Himself? I need to be more like those cows with faith - the ones who subconsciously know the routine, that cake comes every time they're in the parlour, so it's ok to go on in. After all, God has never failed me yet - so why do I have such a hard time trusting Him?
As for what this all has to do with Oswald Chambers...I've been dipping his daily devotionals, "My utmost for His highest", and every time I've read one day's comment, the message has been the same: to find God in every mundane part of life and share the experience with Him, rather than keeping Him separate in the "spiritual box" of quiet times and church, and to daily let Him take control of everything. It's something I find so hard - I like to think that once I've learnt to surrender something to God, that's it, job done - and I don't notice that I've gradually taken control of it and made it into "my" thing again. I think I'm slowly learning the bigger lesson, that the more I learn about Him, the more there is to learn...the bigger in size He appears to me, the more He keeps growing. I thought that all I had to surrender were my plans for my future - the location I'll be in, the work I'll be doing, the people I'll be near, the family I hope to have...and yet I now realise that even though I might have surrendered those things yesterday, I need to also consciously do the same today. I need to tell Him that I had my own ideas about what I wanted but that He has ultimate control and I would rather do His will than have any of those things, and I need to tell Him that every day - just like the proverb says, "we can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps". (Proverbs 16:9, NLT)
When the door closed for me to join YWAM in Austria, I knew I needed to seek God and figure out where I'd gone wrong in my pursuit of what I'd thought was His vision...and He explained to me exactly how I'd set my own agendas above His original plan for me, and limited the vision. Even now, as I'm working on a new route to the vision for Austria, I need to keep placing it in His hands and not seize control of it myself.
As for finding God in the mundane everday events of life, I think my little cow anecdote describes it perfectly...and yet I'm sure, if I really kept my eyes and ears open, I'd have many more stories to tell of how He met with me in the ordinary.
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