I know I’ve written about this before, but I’m feeling so excercised at the moment with the way that so often God chooses seemingly the most round-about, upside-down ways to teach us things. When you’re in the middle it looks like he is in it just to extract some cheap laughs, like some cosmic game of happy slapping… but then there are those beautiful moments of clarity that make the struggle and the heartache and the journey worthwhile.
I think, growing up in the church, that I ended up with some pretty boxed in views about what success and happiness were. I thought public worship was a place for hiding emotion. I thought I had ‘made it’ when I learnt to keep my feelings wholly seperate from the role I played in God’s church… no-one wanted to see the messiness, right?
And then, I got involved in prayer. Suddenly I couldn’t cost through without emotion. Suddenly the stories of my friends and the plight of others and the awesome story of a God who could cut through every chain, undid all my clever masquerading. Worse still, it seemed that God wanted to dig up and heal up all the areas of my own heart that were broken and bitter – not particularly my idea of fun.
I’m a logical person. I like to have my life mapped out. Right now I could give you a pretty accurate run-down of my appointments for the week ahead, unpredictability scares me. And yet I find myself in relationship with this loving, creative, unfathomable, surprising God, who doesn’t fit into any of the boxes I sometimes wish he would.
He messes up the plans I make that are founded on appearance and illusion, he roots out the threads that seek to weave lies into the tapestry of my identity, he breaks down the walls of self-protection and indepedence that I start building each day afresh.
He points me to stillness in the moments I am frantically rushing to fill the silence, and he speaks consistently when I long for that silence to numb me. He appreciates my messy scribbling, and simultaneously has enjoyed the novel that they create. He knows every contradiction that rages in my heart and he loves me fiercely.
My world convinces me to do anything but trust. My past screams that it is illogical, unwise, foolhardy. I glance at the alternatives proffered in my direction: Pretence, superficiality, denial.
I know that trust is the only option.
It’s like that moment when the rollercoaster has creaked to the top of its rickety rail, and you know in a moment you will be helplessly flung down and round and over in loops. Excitement and anticipation and dread and thrill fight for precedence in your mind, you wonder what if the bolts are lose or if your shoes fall off or if you get stuck upside down, but there is no turning back. That’s where I find myself.
Some mornings I wake up breathless in anticipation. This morning I woke up chuckling over a dream I wasn’t able to remember. Other mornings I lay in bed frightened about what the day will entail. Mostly it is somewhere in the middle, and somewhere between stumbling to clean my teeth and bouncing out of the front door I find myself thanking God for the adventure I find myself in.
On Saturday I was walking to our local charity shop. I found myself musing about the heavy bag I was carrying, thinking that it felt too weighty, wondering if I prayed God would be able or willing to send someone to help me carry it. Then I moved on, thinking these thoughts were trivial compared to some of the situations I’m navigating at present. And then, probably only 30 seconds later, a christian guy seemed to pop out from nowhere… I didn’t know him, but he offered to carry my bag. I took him up on his offer, marvelling at God’s provision. It seems like a tiny testimony, it could be brushed off as coincedence, but for me it was a beautiful example of the God who cares about the little situations of my everyday life, the second-hand clothes bag moments, while at the same time guiding me through the complex, challenging stuff that life brings.
Trust is illogical. Hope is seemingly pointless. Some may call this a rose-tinted view. But I believe that I am part of something bigger than I can see. I believe that God is working the weeds and the mud of my life into something wonderful that speaks of him. I am learning to trust that the narrow, difficult roads that look like diversions are often the ones of greatest glory. I am finding that when he says he is constant and unfailing, he means it.
What better journey could there be?
