"We Interrupt For a Commercial"

Technology. Love it or hate it, it's here to stay and it will only get better (or worse, depending on your take on it.) In our home we have TWO HD flat screens, one of which is in the boys room. It was in mine and Shannon's bedroom but we gave it up for the boys. What adult parents of toddlers have time to watch TV in the bedroom anyway? There's too much sleeping going down. We have I Pads, I Phones, I Tunes, I Pods and a coffee pot that makes coffee every morning at the same time. My wife can plug her phone into her van and hold a conversation through the speakers. We can pay our bills online without ever writing a check. The flag on our mailbox has been up twice this year. AT&T has made it possible to watch ANYTHING on demand, and the handy DVR allows me to watch only my favorite shows, fast forwarding through the commercials. Which brings me to my point...

The other day Braxton and I were flipping through the 280,000 channels that U Verse offers and we ran across one of his favorite shows. Being the bad parent that I am, I hadn't saved any episodes in our queue (that's this invisible box inside the visible box that holds your favorite shows, movies etc. for later viewing) and I forced the poor child to watch live TV. It hadn't occurred to me that in his almost three years of existence, he had never watched a commercial. What happened next went sort of like this...

B: "What's that? Where did Bubble Guppies go?"
Me: "Son, that's a commercial."
"What's that?"
"Well, it's a break during your show so  people can sell stuff and the networks can make money."
"What's a network?"
"That's the channel we are watching."
"When is Bubble Guppies coming back on?" He's starting to get upset at this point. He doesn't care about networks or commercials or people making money. He also could care less about the stain fighting power of Tide.
"They will come back on after the commercial."
"When is that?"
"Just a few more minutes."

The thought that he couldn't have Gil, Molly, Bubble Puppy and Mr. Grouper right then and now was to much for his brain to handle. It floored him. Literally. I took a picture. 

He was devastated. It made me really look at myself and how devastated I can be when I don't have what I want ON DEMAND.

Psalm 46:10 says "Be still and know that I am God." My how hard that is to do in this day and age especially with all the technology literally at our fingertips. We have instant access not only to TV but to bank accounts, social media, email, encyclopedias, travel reservations etc. Anything that we need to know or will ever need to know in this world is just a drop and drag away. So why not, with our human brains, would we expect to have to WAIT on God? We don't have to wait on anything else. Not even potatoes.

Our God isn't always an instant God. Don't get me wrong, if He needs to do something in an instant, HE WILL. But a lot of times He needs us to wait on Him to do things in His time. Jesus told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit to come. They didn't rush Him. They waited and look what a blessing they received. Noah waited on the flood waters to subside. He didn't go off rowing or swimming for dry land. He waited on dry land to come to him because that's what God told him to do.

In today's fast paced world, I am convinced that God will put "commercials" in our lives to interrupt our "program" that we have designed for ourselves. Things that make us stop and think about Him and His Glory. It may be a sunset, a dove cooing in the background, a friendly phone call from someone, or a butterfly floating beside you on a hike. Our God is a jealous God, and nothing comes before Him. Thank you Lord for the commercials that you put in my life!!