“I want a new car.”  “I want to get married.”  “I want to be a doctor.”  “I want to have three children.”  “I don’t want to get sick.”  “I don’t want to move away.”  “I don’t want to die yet.”  Sound familiar?  You can fill in the blank for yourselves – what you want and don’t want.  And we usually try our best to achieve what we want and don’t want.  But life doesn’t always work out the way we want.   

My daughter Abby learned a phrase in kindergarten.  Her teacher taught her, “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.”  That’s good guidance for kindergarteners.  And it’s good guidance for us.  But that mantra is hard to actually live by.  We don’t like “you get what you get.”  We “want what we want.”  But like I said, it doesn’t always work out that way.  You can’t afford it.  You haven’t found that right person yet.  Maybe you really don’t have what it takes to be a doctor.  Maybe you can’t have children.  You get sick whether you like it or not.  “The wages of sin is death.”  “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit?”  Try again kindergarten teacher.  I don’t like it.  I want what I want!  I don’t like the hand God has dealt me.  Try again God!  But the problem is that God is God and we are not.  God is God and he does what he wills.  And the problem is when our will doesn’t line up with his will.  And because of who we are – born sinful and unclean in thought, word, and deed – the will of our sinful human flesh will never line up and reflect God’s will.

But what’s God’s will?  In most things, God’s will is a mystery to us.  “Why did this happen to me, God?”  “Why did I have to get sick, God?”  “Why did you take my daughter from me, God?”  And the only answer we can truthfully give to those kinds of questions is, “I don’t know.”  The Jews at the time of Ezekiel may have been asking the same questions.  Specifically, “Why did we have to go into exile in this place, God?  Is there no hope?  What are you going to do God?”  But the Prophet Ezekiel speaks God’s own Word.  In chapter 17, we read:

Thus says the Lord God: “I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and will set it out.  I will break off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar.  And under it will dwell every kind of bird; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest.  And all the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord; I bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.  I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it.

God’s answer to us is the same: “Whatever I want, I will do.”  But in the midst of that uncertainty and the uncertainty in our lives, God gives us a promise, saying, “What I want is you.”  I will take you from where you are and bring you to where I want you to be – with me.  And you will grow and flourish.  I will take care of you as a gardener cares for a young tree.”   God’s message throughout all of Scripture is, “What I want is you.  I want you back.  I reclaim you for myself through my Son, Jesus Christ.  And I am willing to pay a high price to win you back – the death of my Son.  He will die so that death will not be the last word in your life.  He will die and I will raise him up.  And because my Son lives, you too shall live – forever in my care.”

            In the middle of all the struggles of life – all the garbage we experience – God still wants what he wants and wills what he wills.  He is the Lord; he has spoken, and he will do it.  In the middle of all the struggles of life you have hope.  Despite what seems to be evidence to the contrary, you have a Heavenly Father who cares for you.  You have a brother in Jesus Christ who died and rose again for you.  You have the gift of the Holy Spirit who shapes and molds you.  Shapes and molds you to trust that God’s will is what happens.  To trust that in the end, whatever happens, God will work it out for our good.  And you are shaped and molded to bear fruit – to demonstrate the love of God in Jesus Christ where you have been planted to those around you - those struggling just as you struggle. 

            “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.”  And what you have - is a Heavenly Father that loves and cares for you.  He is the Lord.  He has spoken.  He will do it.