Under Construction- Summer Fling Edition

I came back from my summer vacation and pull up to my house only to notice that huge Tonka trucks had barricaded my driveway. Immediately, disgust filled my thoughts and rage- my emotions! The nerve of these men to inconvenience me with no warning! No letter sent to my house earlier in the summer, no alarm that my water pressure might be affected by the pipes running through the ground in the front yard. NOTHING!

Not only that, but they had dug a huge hole in my front yard and muddied up my driveway. What a mess! For the next few days, from 8am to 8pm the loudly labored - beeping sounds, banging noises and loud talking. All very annoying. I had no clue what they were doing, but I didn't even care to ask because my vision was clouded by the fog of annoyed feelings.

Later that night, my mom casually mentioned that our comfy, cozy, quiet, quaint neighborhood had gone years without any fire hydrants in it. She went on to say that it was a miracle no houses had caught fire during that time. Obviously trying to put out a fire without hydrants can be problematic for the residents in that rural area. Now there is a nearby creek that i'm sure the FD somehow would rely on, but the idea was that the city had finally decided to rectify this issue by planting multiple fire hydrants on our street. THAT was the reason for all of the construction, the inconvenience, the neighborhood entry blocking and lane barricading that occurred that week.

Immediately my rage had subsided, my annoyed feelings dwindled and I felt a little bad for being so enraged by their labor. Not knowing why they were disrupting my patterns, causing me to find alternative routes out of my neighborhood made me feel as if they were evil laborers rather than men being told what to do. But once I was privy to the benefit their labor would bring to my, no longer was my uncomfort coupled with anger, but now I could understand that it was necessary even to be inconvenienced.

Listen, God may be doing a work in your life right now. And that work might not look like blessings and overflow. It might interrupt the patterns you're accustomed to. It might inconvenience you and cause feelings of anger and annoyance. But listen, friend...behind that work...even IN that work- God is AT work for your good. It's His grace this far that has kept fires from consuming you, but now He is bringing rivers of life to that area you've been praying for. Endure the construction, envision what might come as a result of it and be thankful that He sees even what you can't and desires to fix it.

Here's a story of how this practically unfolded in my personal life over the past 3 years up until the present. It's a story of my 2017 Summer Fling <---- ----="" begin="" click="" here="" p="" reading="" so="" to="">