My job is a blessing. Not my favorite blessing, mind you. I don't particularly like the work. But the pay and benefits are good, the coworkers are better than normal, and the company and managers are fantastic. A blessing.
Particularly when I look at the lives around me. A parapro at a school is making much less than I do, though I would consider her more intelligent and more disciplined. Another peer is working at Claires, a third at Chic-Fil-A; my sister works the third shift at a hospital as a lab tech, though she went to a better-known college and graduated with better grades. A friend is moving back with her parents without a job, debt piling up. The vice-president of the entire student body of my freshman year, someone I highly respect, just appeared in an article, making over ten thousand dollars less than I do as a teacher. She is also moving back with her parents. My sister is struggling to make the $6000 a semester for the college she commutes to, an hour away.
I do not understand why I have this blessing. I have never particularly hungered after money, other than a brief time as a child. I learned to live with less than the barest minimum while I was in my senior year of college--I have never been able to forget that an adopted grandmother paid half my rent every month. So why do I have this blessing, this higher-than-average-income, why do I have it now?
I've asked this question particularly since I got a promotion, and with it a nice, small raise. Why do I have this blessing?
I've thought, perhaps it's because I'm following God overseas--He's providing for me to pay off my student loans because I'm following His plan. That's a comforting thought, and perhaps it's a true one. But it frustrates me that, if that is true, He keeps sending obstacles in the way of me paying off the loans, by sending bills or events that require money. If he's helping me to go overseas, why not let me pay of the student loans more quickly? Why is the doubtful blessing of my job becoming so complicated?
But today I was taught a lesson by green lights.
Funny things, green lights. There are many times I get my fair mixing of red lights, yellow lights, and green lights, and I wait, or watch, or go straight on through the intersection as the case may be. There are a few times I get every red light, and I smile as I wait, glad a particular song is playing, or tap my fingers impatiently on the wheel, depending on how early I want to be. Or how behind I am. But today, heading to a bookstore to pick up Beatrix Potter stories for my future niece or nephew, I hit all green lights.
It was funny, because that day had been a day I labeled absurd. I was up at 4:30, checking to make sure the water that had poured from our laundry room hadn't done any permanent damage (my sister had failed to notice we had hooked up the sump pump, and unhooked the washing machine). I had taken my sister to school, drove to work, then run across the street to get all of this training required for new managers, mostly on benefits for full-time employees. I manage six part-time employees. I returned to work, and tried to do in two and a half hours what I normally do in eight, while answer a busily ringing phone and clarifying things with my boss about what I would and would not be doing as a team lead. I looked at the clock five minutes after I should have left, remembered I had a two-month-overdue haircut in twenty-five minutes, walked out and turned my phone on, got a text from a worried coworker who had noticed my empty desk that morning, ran back to explain things to her, ran back out to my car, arrived just in time for my hair appointment (missing supper so far, of course), came home, took four bites something warmed in the microwave, went to the grocery store, meeting a friend in the cafeteria and talking for about an hour, bought graham crackers, coconut, and butter to bake with later that evening, and then went to the bookstore.
And got all green lights. I had one left on the drive, and it turned red. I had just been thanking God for all the green lights, but subtly suggesting that I didn't understand why I was getting them today--surely there was a better time to give me this, like when I was stressed and running, not just doing things that weren't timed, only necessary? I asked Him, if He would, to turn the last light green, just for the fun of the thing. But if that wasn't His plan, thanks--and I meant thanks--for the other green lights.
It turned green at the last second, just enough for the cars in front of me to start rolling so I didn't have to stop. But I still didn't understand why I had this blessing now--why green lights today? Then realized--
What a mistaken idea, what a wrong assumption. God doesn't skimp on blessings, doesn't say "I gave you this today, so you can't have it tomorrow." He gives us blessings because He delights in giving us blessings. But He doesn't have to give us blessings we understand, or rather, he doesn't have to give us blessings in such a way that they meet our expectations of how blessing should act, or what the motivation for giving them is. He gives blessings because His hands overflow with good things for His children, he gives the small and large things to bring his children joy. He gives me a good paying job and then the responsibility of handling the money his way, not mine. He gives me blessings to remind me that blessings are gifts, not give and take. He gives me blessings to remind me that blessings are free and freely given.
He gave me green lights.
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