When Things Don't Work As We Like

Tonight I wanted to watch episode 1 of season 2 of Downton Abbey.
It wouldn't work.
I tried everything.
Different browsers.
Different tactics.
Even different computers.
Fail.
Frustration...

I kind of feel like that is my life lately.
Nothing is working... as I desire it to.
All my attempts are thwarted.
My every try seems sabotaged.

I read today a pretty obscure passage in 1 Samuel about people's lives and how God was ultimately brought glory through people's lack of glory, failures, mishaps, and baseness.

Two accounts connected with me...

In the first, the wife of Eli's evil son, Phineas, hears that her husband and father-in-law, Eli, have both died, and that worst of all the glory of the Lord, the Ark has been captured and taken by the Philistines... at this horrible news she spontaneously goes into labor. The text says, "she bowed... for pains came upon her." I can only imagine all types of pains, poor woman! She, too, dies soon after giving birth to her son, seemingly because her life isn't worth living and before she does, she instructs the midwife to name her son Ichabod, "The glory of the Lord has departed."

I am thankful, I am not that desperate, not even remotely!
What touched me was that this woman knew the gravity of the situation around her, she had perspective and she realized what was at stake...  her last dying concern was the glory of the Lord. Oddly refreshing.

The second fairly obscure story was about what happened while the Ark was with the Philistines. Basically, they put the Ark in their temple surrounded by their idols. The Lord God proceeds to continually toppling their false-god's idol until it breaks into pieces and then gives all the people in the area tumors and rats to deal with as a plague. The Philistines, wisely, send the Ark back to Israel, with golden tumors and rats as an offering. So, so, odd. When it returns people in Israel "looked upon the Ark" and God "struck them down"... at this, people said, "Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God?"

This little phrase reminded me my only response ever is to worship. 
To bend and to kneel. 
To bow like the woman.
They are right, "Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God?"

Things in my life are out of my personal control... I have to worship.
Things are a challenge... all I can do is kneel.
All that is really to be concerned with is God's glory.
That is the only thing.