My Daddy preferred the couch…
When I was a child, we were poor. I don't mean that my family was less affluent than the families of my peers–No. I mean the kind of poor where we didn't know how we were going to get through school. The kind of poor when taking a picnic serves the duel purposes of a family vacation and a fancy meal. The kind of poor where we would occasionally eat by candle light only, not because it was romantic or special but because we had no electricity. Now, to be clear, I credit my father for taking each and every one of those situations and making something great of it. He was the reason a dinner without electricity turned into a fancy candlelight dining experience. He was the one who turned our lack of everything other than PB&J into a family vacation to sit and eat at the nearest park.
In fact, one thing sticks out to me specifically: we lived in a small house. There wasn't enough room for us. So in a great act of sacrificial love, my dad–the man who paid for the house and everything in it–spent about 9 years sleeping on our couch under a throw blanket. He chose to make this sacrifice in order that my brothers and I could all have beds. He did it so that we could each have a more comfortable, more normal living experience than his.
I think the same sort of thing can be said for our Heavenly Father.
I see Him, over and over again in my own life, taking piss poor situations, decision, or circumstances and turning those into beautiful masterpieces of sovereignty, glory and praise. He takes our crumby sacrifices of empty cupboards and turns them into an adventure of faith and provision. In our darkness, he shows up as the romantic loveliness of a flickering candle. And when we are in danger of existing less comfortably than He does, he discomforts Himself. Just as my earthly father preferred His own discomfort and lying on the couch so his children could have beds, I see my Heavenly Father discomforting Himself and coming human form. I see Him preferring His own discomfort on the blood stained wooden cross to our discomfort of bondage to sin. He chooses the couch, or the cross as it were, so that we can sleep peacefully in the presence of God.
