At the ripe old age of two, my son became a huge fan of olives. He tasted an olive one day, fell in love, and never looked back. Anything that even remotely appears to be compatible with olives must contain them. Whether it is a salad, a slice of pizza, a taco, or some type of pasta, if it seems like it can handle an olive, then by all means bring on the olives. He loves olives so much that eating them directly out of the jar has become one of his favorite pastimes.
One day I had taken out a jar of Jalapenos for something that I was cooking. Immediately, my son assumed that what I was holding was a jar of olives. Instantly he began to ask for an olive out of the jar. I looked at him and said, “Oh no son, these are not olives, these are jalapenos.” He immediately got upset and began to relentlessly scream out for olives. Time and time again I tried to explain to him that what I was holding was not olives but jalapenos. I tried to explain to him how the jalapenos are extremely hot, would burn his mouth and not be good for his little body. He absolutely did not want to hear it. He was stuck on the fact that what I was holding was a jar of olives – and he wanted one now! He could not figure out why I would not give him one. If there had been a jar of olives anywhere close, I would have not only taken it out to show him the difference, but gladly given him one. Because I knew better than him and because I knew what he did not know, I just endured his complaints but still withheld the jalapenos from him. It was simply a matter of knowing better for him than he knew for himself. He did not know that I was saving him from something that he was unaware of because my knowledge of the situation outweighed his. Furthermore, he did not realize that I was saving him from himself.
Long story short, sometimes what we think are olives are really jalapenos. God will sometimes endure your complaints and frustration because He knows something that you do not know. Take a step back from your frustration and consider this: maybe, just maybe, you have not gotten some of the things that you set out to get because God, seeing the end from the beginning, is saving you from something you cannot see.
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