My mean parents....

Nothing could be farther from the truth than the title of this post, but I can't tell you how many times I thought that growing up. The closer baby Sean's arrival comes the more I'm being taught about how much God's love surpasses even the deepest love of a parent, and yet in so many ways they are alike. I've also been thinking how much as a child of God we resemble children no matter how old we are. How often as God's child do I praise and thank God when He is showering me with blessings, but as soon as the trials come I question His understanding? Children do that. When their parents are loving on them and giving them good things they are happy and mom and dad love them, but as soon as they are told 'no' their parents supposedly no longer love them or know what's best for them from the child's perspective. How often does God, like my parents withhold something that may seem good in my eyes because He knows so much more than me and is willing to be 'unliked' for a time to protect me from consequences that I cannot fathom? God and a parent's love is so deep that it is wiling to do what's best for the child at the risk of being accused of not caring or loving. Another resemblance I have noticed in God's love and a parents love is that a child will sometimes misrepresent or change what his parents say for his convenience. How often as a child of God do I take His word out of context to find peace and to attempt to justify my selfish whims and agendas. A child says, "I know what I'm doing. You don't know what you're talking about. You've never been through what I'm going through" and we all know how foolish that is to say that to an adult who has already learned significantly more, but how often do I do that to God? I may think I know what I am doing, that I can simply "follow my heart" and I may read my Bible and pray but when I get my eyes focused on something I want, then suddenly I am the only ones who understand MY situation, I am the only one who has been through this and I am the only one that knows what I am talking about. Then to top it all off, I'm even willing to go as far as distance myself from the people who care enough to tell me the truth and surround myself with the people that will make me feel the way I want to feel. God says in Jeremiah 17:9, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"
The truth is I will never be 'adult' enough to run my own life. I am still a child. I simply have gone from being directly under my parents care to being under my heavenly Father's care. I am humbled at the fact that my parents were willing to be misunderstood, misrepresented, and even have their love under estimated, but what humbles me even more is to have learned that God's love is infinitely greater than that. He loved me before I loved Him. He gave His life when it was my sins that put Him on the cross. And lives forever and cares for us in a way that no one else ever could.