Stepping Outside the Box

Have you ever heard the analogy for male and female brains that compares the first to a waffle and the second to spaghetti? (Bill and Pam Farrel)  While it is not an absolute rule, I find myself fitting this generalization most of the time.  My brain runs around bushes and makes connections everywhere (which I may or may not state aloud).  One friend generously denoted my writing style as "webby" when contrasting it to his own fluid and linear prose.  Yet I also feel the tug of boxes in particular situations, especially when dealing with people or ideas that I do not understand.

It would be so reassuring if we could put everything into nice, little boxes--neatly labeled, of course--and not really have to deal with the questions or pain or knowledge of our own ignorance attached to them.  But we cannot.

I am reminded way too often that people just do not fit inside the cool boxes I diligently prepare for them.  They may disappoint me in one area but then they will soar above my expectations in another area until I finally despair of ever making a box that really fits well.

Yet I persist in making boxes . . . .

I have tried making a box for God.  I have even tried making a box for myself!  Neither of these ideas worked very well.  The first failed because God is bigger than any box that I can build in my finite humanity.  If He is bigger than all of spake and time, He most certainly will be bigger than any concept I could design.

Likewise, His will for my life will not fit in any box of expectations that I might have created.  God's imagination is infinitely superior to mine, and He can create situations that I would never have thought possible.  I find, though, that my desire to fit everything into a nice little understandable box is in direct conflict with the joy I find in surprises and in being unconventional.  I prize being a unique individual created by God for a very specific purpose, yet I balk at His creative sense of timing and direction in my life.  Perhaps He could work through me more effectively if I were cooperative and stepped outside the box willingly rather than leaving Him to strip my expectations of His plan from me one by one . . . . (Matt. 14:26-31 ESV)