My husband can always tell when I’m cleaning out a closet. The bed or table is covered with miscellaneous items, in stacks that only I can understand. My plan is to create order out of chaos scattered about.
I always tell him “it has to get worse before it gets better”.
You see, the closet is the place where all sorts of items go when I don’t have time to find a permanent home for them. Then, when the floor and shelves of the closet are littered with so much stuff that we can’t see the carpet, I know it’s time to start sorting through the chaos.
Life is sometimes like that. Sometimes it’s messy and disorganized. Sometimes it seems that chaos has come to rule the day. All we can see is the clutter. Nothing makes sense. Everything is scattered beyond our control and we don’t know how to bring our lives back into order.
There are times when it has to get worse before it gets better.
Think about the Israelites as they escaped from Egypt. As they wandered the desert in search of the “Holy Land” God had promised Moses, they began to grumble and complain. They didn’t have what they thought they needed. Because of their lack of understanding, they couldn’t see God’s hand at work in their circumstances.
How often they rebelled against Him in the wilderness And grieved Him in the desert! Psalms 78:40 NASB
Faced with the mess of their existing conditions, they started saying they would be better off back in Egypt. At least they knew what their future would be there. They had already forgotten what harsh conditions they experienced as slaves to the Egyptians.
But after 40 years of waiting and wandering in the desert, God brought them finally into the Promised Land of Canaan.
You gave the people of Israel this land that you had promised their ancestors long before—a land flowing with milk and honey. Jeremiah 32:22 NLT
Many of us are wandering, much like the Israelites, in a state of confusion and chaos. We don’t know for sure where we are headed. All we have are uncertainty and unanswered questions. We can’t see how God can bring order out of all the mess.
It’s. Just. Too. Much.
But as believers, we can hold onto the knowledge that God is orchestrating events around us to bring us through to the other side. We don’t have to focus on our current circumstances. We can trust God no matter what we see in front of us. We can keep our eyes on Him, knowing there are reasons why things are the way they are right now.
There are times when it has to get worse before it gets better.
Getting your life straightened out may seem to be an impossible task. But with God, nothing is impossible! So no matter how messed up your life looks right now, be patient and trust God. Maybe he’s just cleaning out your closet!
So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. 2 Corinthians 4:18
