When You Can’t Find The Solution

One of my students couldn’t find something of his in the classroom a few days ago, and I have to confess that I told him flat out, “Guys can’t find things.”

“Thanks a lot,” he said. His indignation was justified, since I had just thrown all men under the bus. But then I went to look for the lost item and immediately put my hand on it.

So, come on. Girls are better at finding things in pantries and medicine closets than guys are. I gloat about this at my house with no shame. (NOTE: There’s an equal amount of teasing from my guys about how girls cannot make sound effects, so I feel like I’m allowed at least one blanket generalization.)

“Where’s the provolone cheese?” Matt said just this week, as he pulled his head up out of the fridge. I opened the door and pulled the cheese out of the bin where he had just been looking.

“Oh, right there,” he said.

So anyhoo, I was thinking about how men and women are made in the image of God, and I was imagining, then, that women reflect a little bit of who God is when they know just where things are.

God can find things that humans can’t seem to see.

Like the answers to relationship troubles or weeding out your own sin or figuring out how to raise your kids –how in the world could we find wisdom for these things without God saying, “Look, the solution is right here.”

So I will steal words from the Psalms:

Show me the wonders of your great love… (Psalm 17:7 NIV)

Show me your ways, LORD… (Psalm 25:4 NIV)

Show me, LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days.  (Psalm 39:4 NIV)

Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.  (Psalm 143:8 NIV)

Show me, show me, show me, Lord, because if you don’t I’m like a man looking for green beans in a pantry.