Word prompt--TRADE
Five minutes to free-write about it
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This week's prompt made me think of a story I heard a long, long time ago that went something like this:
A young man. was going through a hard time and felt as though he had reached the end of his rope. He cried out to the Lord and told Him he could not go on. His cross was too heavy to bear. So the Lord told the man to put it down, and led him into a room filled with crosses of all kinds. He told him he could trade his cross for any of them he wanted.
The man looked around at all the crosses in the room. There were crosses of all sizes. Some were so big they reached the ceiling, some looked very heavy, and then he spotted a tiny cross all the way in a corner at the back of the room. He told the Lord that was the one he wanted. The Lord turned the little cross over to show him the name on the back of it, and it was the man's own cross, the one he had wanted to trade.
Sometimes I feel like that man. I get weary, and the grass seems a lot greener on the other side of the fence. But that thought lasts only for a moment. No matter what I've gone through, even when it has felt like the pits, and even when I wished things were different, I have never wanted to trade my life for anyone else's.
God made us all unique. We are one-of-a-kind Divine originals created for a special purpose and plan that only we can fulfill. He knows what we can and cannot handle, and has equipped us accordingly. Although He does not expect us to do it in our own strength, neither has He equipped us to live out the story He designed someone else to live.
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For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unfomed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. -- Psalm 139:13-16, NIV
