Others Centered

Thoughts on Benjamin Button

Last night my wife and I saw “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”.  Overall it was pretty good but there was one scene in particular that got me thinking.  The scene involved Daisy getting hit by a car and Benjamin’s description of the string of events that led to the accident.

He told how a woman forgot her jacket in her house which led to her answering a call that made her miss a cab by a few seconds.  She took another cab that was there only because the driver stopped for coffee preventing him from showing up to her location earlier.  Daisy was finishing up dance practice but left after everyone else because she was waiting for her friend.  Her friend caused a slight delay because her shoelace broke.  They went out the back door of the studio.  The cab driver was not paying attention because he was distracted by the coffee he had just purchased and hit Daisy causing her to fracture her leg preventing her from ever dancing again.  If any of these minor events had played out differently, Daisy would not have been hit by the car but they all happened the way they did.

This got me thinking about our lives and the events that take us where we are, and the role God has in shaping our future.  God knows all and sees all.  He is outside of time so He knows how every event is going to affect our future.  We still have choices to make as God gives us free will.  He gave Adam and Even a choice in the Garden and they chose to disobey.  That single event led to the existence of all the sin and pain we have in the world.  Life is a series of events that require our choices.

With this, I began thinking about prayer and the choices we make.  Jesus told us not to pray like the hypocritical Pharisees who prayed about their own greatness and asked God to help them not be like the other sinners.  Their prayers were self-centered.  People mess up the idea of prayer so much.  They think it is a way for us to tell God what we want in our lives and give Him a laundry list of the things He needs to do for us.  When He does not answer them and grant all of our demands, we get mad at Him and accuse Him of not caring and not listening.

Prayer is God’s way of letting us seek His will.  Too often we pray about ourselves, we pray about what we want, we pray about what we want God to do for us.  Jesus taught us to pray  by praising God, asking for His will in our lives, asking for forgiveness, and asking for the needs we have for today.  Prayer is also a good time to pray for other people.  When we take time to pray for others, we stop focusing on what we think is the solution to our problems and start focusing more on what God wants.

I am not perfect in any way at praying.  I have had times when my prayer life was spot on but I usually fall into the trap of self-centered prayers.  We need to make sure that we are asking God what His will for our lives are.  If we are doing that, we will be more likely to make better decisions when faced with choices that could lead to events such as Daisy’s accident.  If we know that our decisions were based on God’s will, we can accept things that happen to us  that may not make total sense.

Remember, God is always in control no matter how good or how bad the situation is.  That is something I need to focus on in the situation I currently find myself in.