Trees, Forests and a Yardstick

It's funny, how over a period of time in your devotions, God can bring up the same lesson, principle, truth, etc... over and over again and you see that, you recognize it as God teaching it to you in that moment and still miss the point entirely. Does that make sense? Let me try to explain.
     Last Saturday, I was being a little whiny with God (okay, actually it was a lot whiny) over the path He has led this journey through this summer. It seemed to me that God was slowing down, not teaching as much, not talking as much. I came to this conclusion based on the decrease in blog posts over the summer. If I had nothing to write about, it must be because God wasn't doing His part anymore, right? God didn't think so. Right away He made it very clear to me that these blog posts were never meant to be a spiritual measuring stick; they were meant to be a remembrance of the journey and as a testament of God's working through our prayers for my sophomores.
     He then brought to my attention my daily devotions. When I looked back at my devotional journal over the summer, the majority of my devotions have been on God's faithfulness to His promises. Time and again I read verses that point blank said God has not forgotten His promises, that He will do as He promised. You can't read the stories of the patriarchs and Moses and not learn that while God's timing and ours rarely coincide, God always comes through on His word. These stories are where I spent most of July reading.
     God had spent the summer telling me He hadn't forgotten His promise to me concerning Tebow; He was even gracious enough to let me know He was working. As God brought each verse to me this summer about His faithfulness, I recognized what God was  telling me...He hadn't forgotten. As I read the stories of Abraham I very clearly saw that we needed to be faithful to trust God even when the answer is long in coming. I saw the importance of not taking matters into my own hands as I witnessed Rebekah, then Leah and Rachel push their will on their husbands. As Moses led the children of Israel from Egypt, I understood God's delays often bring spectacular results so wait for them.
     I got these truths as God was teaching them to me, what I didn't see was the whole summer that He spent telling me to hold on, the answer is coming, just stay faithful. It really took me by surprise when I realized, that for all my whining and complaining this summer about God being silent, He wasn't, not at all. God was saying plenty, I was just using the wrong measuring stick to judge by...my words verses His promises.
    "Don't miss the forest for the trees" comes to mind here. The forest, God's repeated admonishments to remain faithful, was there, but I wasn't seeing it because I was focusing too closely on how I thought God should show His teaching, the blogs, and then using that as a wrong yardstick to measure His teaching by.
     It's tempting to hold God to our own standards and our ways of thinking. Really though, God thinks so much better than we do, it's best for us to let Him do it...and ever so slowly, I am learning to do just that.