GOD of trials both LARGE & small

It is Monday morning and I am sitting here on our couch in our little home. Arianna is playing, lost somewhere in between dancing to the music I have playing and trying to figure out what toy she is going to play with next (currently with her Fisher-Price Barnyard toy she got from her Uncle Jon).
Maybe I am just slow, but it is finally starting to sink in that I am a father. You may ask why it has taken me so long, given the events at the beginning of her uncertain life. I know, I am pondering the same question as I sit here on the couch watching her walk, dance and flash her two-tooth smile at her daddy. There is more than just thankfulness to God for blessing us with a now healthy and in many respects a little girl that is above average when it comes to her physical development. Less than a year ago she was balancing in uncertainty in our minds. Our hearts broken, as we knew her little heart was not able to sustain her life.
It was then that God’s people surrounded us with their prayer and their love. It was then that brothers and sisters in Christ helped us bear the burden that God had chose to bless us with. We did not see it as a blessing, nor would I ever wish it upon anyone else, but I have learned that if God sees it good for a trial to enter into your life He will also be good to bring you through it. This does not guarantee that it will turn out the way you would desire, but God will still bring you through it as you continually trust in Him.
I am not trying to impose or give you the impression that I am a super-spiritual man and have it all together when it comes to trials. Just yesterday I was all out of sorts when I thought that I had failed to save a PowerPoint presentation after working on it for a few hours.
It is important to understand the difference between the trial we went through with our daughter and the ‘trial’ I went through with my presentation before understanding what the root of the issue is.
With my daughter, I knew that I could do nothing directly to help her poor condition. I was not able to physically fix her heart. I could not become a surgeon fast enough to be of any help to her. It was only God who could fix her through the hands of her surgeon. I believe God moved the hands of the surgeons in the same way His hands moved Herod and Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever he pleased. His plans had predestined the crucifixion of His Son (Acts 4:26-28). In other words it was totally out of my control. I could do nothing but fall into the hands of a gracious God.
With my presentation, I knew that I could do something about it. I knew that since I had already done it once I was able to do it again, even though I did not want to do it again. I did not think that God was involved in the matter at all, but rather it was just by my ignorance and stupidity that I didn’t save the presentation correctly (which is still possible). The fact of the matter is that God did not cease to be God though the differences of these trials were huge. The very life of a child was standing in the balance with the first, and the mere frustration of myself on the second.
Why am I musing with such thoughts? Because at the root of this issue is my lack of understanding of who God is. If God is unchanging and there is no shadow of turning with him He indeed remained the same God through both of these trials. The issue is the amount of trust and faith that I chose to draw from God in each of these trials. Trust? Yes! Faith? Yes! If I was able to draw the same amount of trust from God amidst my frustration of losing the presentation that I was able to draw from God amidst the trial of my daughter’s peril, I would have saved a lot of frustration and anger.
The key difference is that with the presentation I believed that I was in more control over the issue at hand than I was with my daughter. It could be argued and proven that indeed I was, but that does not change the deeper issue. The point to this whole thing is that God does not cease to be God for one moment. He is the One who created all the heavens that contain things that no human eye has ever seen. He is the One who created creatures in the sea that will never be discovered by man. The God that shut the mouths of lions is the same God that holds all things together by the power of His Word. This is the God that we draw our faith and trust from.
I will go out on a limb and say this: the true test of our faith and trust in God is not in how we respond to the trials that are seen as the big ones, when all we can do is trust in him, but rather it is when we lose a presentation, can’t get our locker open at school, misplace our wallet or didn’t make the sports team. I will not argue that it is the ‘big trials’ that are viewed by the unbelieving world with more importance. It is this way because they don’t have faith in God in the same way as we do. There is a larger scale of opportunity to share Christ in these trials with the unbelieving world, but for the rest of us who struggle with the day to day frustrations of life we can rest in the fact that we are able to draw trust from God in the same way as those who draw trust from Him in ‘larger trials’. Oh, by the way, I found out that I didn’t lose my presentation. God Bless.