When we suffer, our hearts want nothing more than to control our circumstances.  We think that peace is only possible if we can personally control the outcomes.  So it's not easy to follow a God who asks us to surrender control and to replace it with trust. It's not easy because we're too used to vending machines.
     When it comes down to it, I'd rather get my food from a vending machine than from a garden. Maybe that's in large part due to my (admittedly toxic) eating habits. Maybe my history of frustration with gardening plays into that as well. I've put in the work, dirtied my hands, sweated out the sun, and invested in the seeds and the soil only to receive a few wrinkled peppers for my trouble. Regardless of how I got here, I find myself in much the same situation as most westernized Christians in the 20th and 21st centuries. Whether we recognize it or not, even Bible-believing Christians are shaped by a culture that conditions us to expect predictability and control.  Because of that, we deeply struggle to live in step with a God who does not conform to those expectations.  A God who resists our efforts to reduce his acticity to a formula or to in some way manipulate him.
     The Bible was originally written to peoples and societies that were much closer to the challenges (and rewards!) of working the land to produce food. Therefore, the way that God in Scripture describes his kingdom, his people, and his purposes quite often involves agrarian metaphors:
"The kingdom of heaven is like a field..." (Matthew 13:24-30)
"As the rain... water[s] the earth..." (Isaiah 55:10-11)
"My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill..." (Isaiah 5:1-7)
"A sower went out to sow..." (Mark 4:3-8)
"I am the vine, you are the branches..." (John 15:1-6)
     Since most of us today find that our lives are separated from agriculture, these figures of speech don't land with the same impact. We are a society of instant gratification. Kids today don't need to wait until 4pm to watch their favorite show (4pm was my sacred hour growing up because Scooby-Doo was on TV); they can select their favorite shows and movies and games whenever they want with just a simple tap of the screen. I realized I had run out of a particular kitchen product the other day, and rather than add it to a shopping list and wait for our next trip to the store, I ordered it online so that it arrived at my door the next morning. If we want our dinner warm, there's a microwave. If we want to choose from an obscene selection of treats and beverages, there are vending machines. Vending machines are nice - you put your money in, press the right button, and you get exactly what you expected, exactly what you wanted.
     A garden is different. You plant seeds. You wait. You work more. You wait. Maybe something grows, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it begins to grow but then a hailstorm or early frost wipes out the whole crop. You don't always get what you want or what you expect. And that is partly why the Bible uses agrarian imagery to describe God and his ways. Our mechanistic, scientific, vending-machine worldview has a high expectation of control. If I understand the system, then with the right input I can produce predictable and desirable outcomes. Not so with the land. We have such limited control, it can be nerve-racking.
      So where is all this headed? Well, in our relationship with God, we want the same kind of control that we have over machines. But control is exactly what we don't have. We want a God who responds predictably to our tithe, our obedience, our prayers, our religious habits. So when life seems off the rails, we want to diagnose the problem. "Where did I go wrong?" "How can I fix this?" We grasp about for the right prayer, the right promise to claim, the right discipline to develop. We try to put our hands on whatever we believe is the right coin and button to get the divine vending machine spitting out the results we want. What must I do to make the cancer go away? What does God want from me so that my marriage gets back on track? What will it take to get the life I want to have?
     This mechanistic view of God and the world appeals to our desire for control. But the world in which we actually live is less mechanistic and more agrarian. We have to give up the illusion that with the right effort on our part, we can control the outcomes of our life. In place of control, we need to cultivate trust. In the agrarian model of how our lives work, we put in effort, and sometimes that effort produces what we expect and sometimes it does not. There is a certain scientific and moral order to the universe, but in the end, God works his will and we can't force or stop his hand.
     There is a real tension here, one that plays out in several of the Bible's Wisdom books. Proverbs describes a more mechanistic world - do what is right and you will prosper; do what is wrong, and you will suffer. Then Ecclesiastes meditates on how that system does not work consistently. Sometimes the righteous die in poverty and obscurity while the wicked prosper for a season. Then there's the book of Job, which plays out the drama of people trying to make sense of how a righteous man who seemingly did everything right is now suffering as if he did everything wrong.
     Our hearts want a Proverbs world, a world of predictability, consistency, and clear expectations. That's a world where we have more control. What we get is an Ecclesiastes world, one characterized by confusion, frustration, and disappointment. What we need is the truth in which Job rested after so many trials and wrestlings with God. “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted" (Job 42:2). So rather than seek control over our days, we are enabled to trust the one who actually has that control, the one whose purposes cannot be thwarted (or predicted, or manipulated...). Because his control is united to his loving character, we can dig in the soil, plant the seeds, and water them well; and then we can rest, knowing that the one who controls all things is the one who loves us, and he does all things well.