Sometimes - when the sun is shining brightly, the scent of flowers is filling the air and we are feeling good - then we would like to thank God for all these good things, then we would like to bring Him a sacrifice of praise. If then someone would ask us for an offering, we would generously draw some notes or write him a substantial check without any regrets.
But the strange thing is that when we feel young and strong and happy, we are prepared to do everything required of us, except… to ask the Lord what He wants us to do.
Happiness, peace, and joy tend to go to our heads and - unfortunately - only hardships and distress can make us silent before God.
If we become deeply aware of God’s indescribable patience - how He was prepared to bear with us in all our conceitedness and obstinacy - a desire is born in our hearts to become genuinely silent and ask Him, redeemed from all personal opinions, ‘Lord, what are Your plans with my life? Teach me to follow Your paths.’
But then - suddenly - the Bible becomes a completely different book to us. Then God starts speaking to us. Then new worlds open up for us. Then we start understanding passages we have perhaps read so often, but never understood. God then turns out to be not a distant God, but a very close God: a God of our daily life. By His word, He then makes us familiar with His divine way of thinking, by which our own thinking is renewed. Through this, we come to understand what is good in His eyes and what He requires of us: To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.
That is the true redemption from dark complexity which brings us into the simplicity of living with God.