This last Summer I set out to accomplish a life-long desire of mine: to solve a Rubik's Cube. If you aren't familiar with this toy, it is a 3 by 3 cube with different colored sides. The base is white, the top is yellow, and the sides are red, green, orange, and blue. Each of the six sides has 9 squares and you have to line up the squares on the sides by rotating and rotating and rotating...
Anyway, I have owned Rubik's Cubes in the past and I haven't been able to solve them. There are logarithms in place that help solve it, but I was determined to solve it on my own. I tried and tried and then something happened. When I was a substitute teacher at a middle school last year, a bunch of the students had Rubik's Cubes and they were solving them with ease. I knew they used the logarithms but I was too frustrated to jump on their boat and set my course with them. My stubbornness just made the frustration grow and grow until I couldn't take it anymore. I Googled the solution to the Rubik's Cube and printed out the instructions.
With the solution, I could solve the Rubik's Cube and line up all of the colors in order, but there was still a problem. I had to have the instructions with me all the time. So all Summer I spent every idle moment with the cube in hand doing the up, left, back, right, up, left--that's not the logarithm but you get the idea. There are five phases to the solution and I memorized each phase by working on them over and over again. Two months passed and I finally proved to my wife and daughters that I could solve the cube without the aid of the instructions. Now, I can solve any unsolved cube with ease and my best time is under 90 seconds.
The point of all this isn't to brag--but I can because I can solve a Rubik's Cube--the point is that I learned something else in my adventure this Summer. I learned that my journey was like many faith journeys. First, our human desire is to solve life on our own, but that gets frustrating. Next, we see others with the solution from God and it looks great but we'd still rather do it on our own so we keep on stubbornly trying to solve life alone. Then, we see someone turn to God who shouldn't and it makes us even more stubborn, thinking we are better than that. But this all finally leads to a point when we just know that we can't do it on our own anymore and we decide to turn to God. When this happens, we are new in the faith and we have to turn to the instructions (Bible and Church) over and over again. Finally, down the line, we are able to be with God on our own and can help others come to know God.
Okay, so it doesn't always happen this way, but you get the point and see that we can be stuck in a lot of different phases in our faith. Sometimes we rely on others and sometimes they rely on us, but the common denominator is to be with God. Rest in his presence this week and know that God will give you rest.