About a year ago my son became interested in the Rubik’s Cube. After purchasing him one, he went straight to internet help sites to learn how to overcome the cube’s challenge. It took some time before he memorized its specific moves and was able to solve it with no help.
Interestingly, solving the challenge did not make him bored of it. Instead, he played with it daily, asking us to “mix it up” in different ways and naming a color he would begin with. Then, he wanted to see how quickly he could solve it—many times it would be under a minute. It wasn’t long until he made solving the cube look easy. Lately, he will even casually look away while solving it because he has become so comfortable with it. No matter how difficult we thought we’d made it, he’d soon have all the sides and colors solved. No matter how messed up it was, the Rubik’s Cube was no longer a challenge to him.
Then, one day, he began a campaign to encourage me to learn to solve it. After awhile of asking, I finally gave in (just this week) and began my quest to find the solution. I also studied the specific moves and learned its patterns. I’ll admit, it was a lot of fun trying to figure it out—I had wanted to solve it since I was a kid (of course, back then I could only ever solve one color). The first several times I found myself having to peek at a cheat-sheet in order to be successful. However, I was soon able to see the patterns, and even more, the solutions and was able to successfully solve it without any help! (My son got very excited when he watched me do it by myself.)
And then I noticed something my son had already learned: I wasn’t able to mix up the cube in any way that would make it unsolvable. No matter how messed up I made it it never looked more difficult. This dawned on me even more when I heard one of my son’s friends say, after thoroughly mixing up the colors, that there was no way it could be solved. I remembered thinking the same way not long before. Yet, as I watched my son quickly (way quicker than me!) solve it once again, I understood why he had such confidence with it—why my confidence was also growing: I knew its solution.
All of a sudden a thought came to me: this is similar to our struggles in life and God. Let me explain. We think things in our lives can get so messed up that there’s no solution (no cure, no forgiveness, etc), yet we only feel this way because we don’t know how to solve such situations. Yet life, no matter how “mixed up” we might make it, is just as easy for God to solve because He knows the solution. Just as Jesus told His disciples, “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Yes, our lives may become so mixed up we cannot see a way out, but we do not have to worry, Jesus knows the solution. He won’t panic or become worried that He won’t be able to solve our messy lives, because He has already conquered any problems we may face.
I believe that if we could see our situations from His point of view (able to see every pattern and every resolution), we would never think anything was impossible (for Him) and would never view any situation as unsolvable (to Him). Maybe this is why it is easier for us to have faith in Him in the situations He has already brought us through—because we’ve witnessed His hands solve the problem. Yet, if we will fully trust our jumbled lives in God’s powerful hands, no situation we ever face will be impossible or unsolvable!