Mila was on my lap before the knock, but when the package man came she started was barking, trying to run to the door to see him. I had a hard time getting attention when I called her, so I finally just caught her and closed both the bedroom and the bathroom door, putting her on top of the counter so she couldn't bark at the door while I washed my face. She started trembling, and I realized something. Where she had been going after the package man before, completely oblivious to me, she was now forced to rely on me to get her down from the high, slippery counter.
It hit me that it's like that with us and God. Sounds weird, but stay with me. :P His children are like the loving but easily distracted dog who run so easily after other things when they come knocking and forget their Master, even, possibly, after we have just been sitting trustingly in His lap, learning from him. He runs after us *as we run from Him* and may close doors in our life that we really wanted to be on the other side of. He sets us high upon slippery counters we may call deserts or waiting periods, out of reach of the things we would otherwise chase. This forces us to look up to him, maybe trembling with desire to go back to those things He so graciously saved us from, but looking to Him nonetheless. We are forced to wait on His timing to take us out of the desert (or surgery table if He places us on a "counter" of suffering) with loving hands. But then there is the testing. Will we eagerly thank Him and run out the doors He again opens and back to the thing we desired in the first place? Or will we thank Him and wait at His feet, still looking up at Him in gratefulness and awe that He saved us from what we thought was good for us and ready for His hands to continue guiding us more easily as we stay close to Him?
I could go on about what the Master does while we are on the "counter". But you get my point. The "face washing" is good for us somehow (we might get a bath) before the incision or daily as we walk through the desert. His love shines in his meeting our needs in the desert or in the picture of a Greater Healing someday that we see in the small surgeries now. Wow, just saying that made a bunch of things clear just now... Sometimes life lessons come from very unexpected places.
