The Offer Of Your King

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead . . .

There once was a girl who believed her ways were higher than her King’s. Each day she etched her plans into the cobblestones outside his castle, hoping she could persuade him to make her dreams come true.

Her dainty hands grew calloused from etching the stubborn stone. While she focused on the letters day after day, the King would visit her and invite her into the castle for a delicious feast. But she didn’t hear him over the scratch, scratch, scratch of her carving knife against the rock.

The girl gathered treasures and, instead of enjoying them or thanking the King for his provision, she stowed them in a safe place, believing they would fit perfectly alongside the stone-carved plans she hoped would come to pass.

As the years went by and her carvings grew deeper, the King continued to extend his invitation to dine with him in his castle. He wished she would look up and behold the beauty around her and the life unfolding before her eyes rather than being so consumed with writing her own story.

One day, in her impatience with the King for not making her plans come to fruition, her hand slipped, causing her to break her carving knife and cut her hand. She threw away her treasures in a terrible fit and refused to go to the castle, choosing instead to remain at her cottage.

She was sulking with a bandaged hand when she heard a tap-tap-tap on the door. Opening it slowly, she found her King standing there with a bouquet of flowers and a picnic feast. She burst into tears at the generous, undeserved offer to her stubborn heart.

She took the King’s arm, and they walked to the fields by the castle, laughing and dancing along the way. She gazed at eye-catching flowers she hadn’t noticed before, her lungs breathed fresh air, and her ears heard the music of trees swaying in the wind.

In a flash, she realized that what she’d been given was better than what she longed for while etching her hopes and dreams in stone. Her plans paled in comparison to her King’s love and presence.

She fretted over the wasted days, but the King is not one to look back. All along, he’d been etching a better story into her heart of stone—a story of surrender, a story of grace.

Word before World God’s ways and thoughts are higher, wider, and deeper than our own.

Grow in Grace What part of your story or plans are you holding back from the Lord? Surrender your expectations and accept God’s offer to enjoy knowing him.