Monday, December 20, 2010

My Stop With God

Ralph Waldo Emmerson once wrote, “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown.” I disagree. Man has been cursed with a short memory. I know because I am one.

Life has a certain way of taking something that is so clear in one moment and covering it up in the next. My problem is that the second I lose sight of it, I can’t remember what it was truly like or how to find it again. This is a struggle I face over and over again in my relationship with God. My walk with God can many times be better described as my stop with God. The relationship that defines my existence has a tendency to get lost in the midst of that very same existence. The world that I am forced to walk through leaves it’s grease and grime over the most fundamental part of my life. As I attempt to fix this problem I don’t struggle with complacency nearly as much as I struggle with my approach.

I get sick of the muck covering my heart so I try to wipe it away, but I only succeed in blurring what’s underneath even more. As I said before the problem was not a lack of effort, but a bad approach. I always tried to find my way back to the heart of God in my strength. I would study harder to try to understand Him more. (How foolish am I trying to understand a God I cannot even fully comprehend?) That inevitably fails. So I try to love people to make it back to God, but the motive of my heart is clear to Him and the immovable will not be so easily manipulated. In a last ditch effort I pout, hoping God will have pity on such a poor soul. The Father is far too great a parent to encourage good results from bad actions. The more I tried the more blurred it became.

After all of this a friend gave me the best advice I have heard in a long time. She said, “Maybe if you stop trying to analyze God, He could reveal Himself to you.” (Light bulb moment!) God is not a mystery to be solved. He is not a boss waiting for you to complete an assignment. He is not a Father who sacrifices the long term to satisfy the short term. He is God.

I am going take that advice. I am going to seek Him just to be with Him. The bad news is I tried to fix it the only ways I knew how and learned I didn’t know how to fix it. But thanks to a friend, today I remembered the good news and that is that I don’t have to know how to fix it. I just have to remember to find the One who does.

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