Today while teaching second graders their way around a keyboard, I was thinking about how God sees things.  You start teaching second graders to type by showing them where to put their fingers on the keyboard: asdf &;lj.  At least I think you do; I’m not a real typing teacher.  You tell them, “those are the ‘houses’ for your fingers.  Your fingers always stay in their houses except when they visit their friends above and below them.”  Then you have them do simple exercises to learn where their “friends” are on the keyboard: a-q-a-z &j-u-j-m.  You always have to remind them to keep their “fingers in their houses”.  And of course, they always want to just use one finger to hunt and peck the keys.  What’s interesting is how often a student asks you to see what he’s (or she’s) done and you see a nice row of a-q-a-z-a-q-a-z…  Then you ask to see them do it and they use their right index finger to peck out those letters!  No, you tell them, I need to see you doing it with the right fingers.  It doesn’t really matter if you have the right (or wrong) letter on the page if you’ve used the wrong fingers to type them.  The process, how you do it, is much more important than the results.

And today it hit me, that’s probably how God is.  He cares so much more about the process, how we do something (and why) than he does about the end results.  In the end he can bring about his purposes just fine, much better, probably, without me than with me.  He wants me to grow, to develop, to become more Christlike more than he wants me to accomplish a set of goals.  So often we (Americans!) are set on accomplishing goals, building stuff, making stuff, doing stuff.  And that’s ok, assuming the stuff is God-honoring to begin with.  But our stuff is really pretty small when we really think about it, compared to God’s works.  He doesn’t want our stuff, he wants us.  That means the process, how we type, is much more important than the results, what ends up on that page.