One of the crazy things I am learning in this phase of life is that sometimes I do not always understand why God directs our lives the way He does. Why does he direct one person to go while telling another to stay and fight? Why does He allow some people to experience unimaginable abuse? Why does He not step in and just "fix" things?
To be honest these are questions I struggle with a lot. On a personal level I have questioned many times why the direction for me was "Leave now" while another person heard "Stay a little longer". Why are my experiences in church different from other peoples? In some ways I envy the person with incredible happy memories of church camp with friends, youth conventions and end of summer pool parties with friends. That was not my experience. And so I question.... "Why God? Why are our experiences so different?"
I am in introvert. I take vast amounts of information and process it internally. I probably overanalyze any given situation trying to make sense out of it. My counselor often challenges me with the question "Why does it need to make sense". I think over time I have learned that sometimes that can be my way of trying to cope with incredible pain. Other times it can be an overdeveloped need to take responsibility for everything that happens in my sphere of influence.
Don't get me wrong. We need to evaluate from a healthy place what we are responsible for, but the reality is that we are not responsible for everything. There are two people in every relationship. All we can do is identify and recognize what we are responsible for.
So what happens when life doesn't make sense?
Well, that is where waiting and faith come in.
One of my favorite stories in Scripture, is the story of Elijah. Immediately following this amazing victory over the prophets of Baal, where God sends fire from heaven. We see Elijah running from the queen and hiding in a cave.
What follows for Elijah is a period of rest and restoration after which he is sent to first a brook to be fed by ravens and later to a penniless widow and her son.
Can you imagine what trusting God looked like for Elijah?
He had to think God was insane!
First you are telling me that birds are going to feed me, and not any bird, but a bird that eats roadkill?
And then you are going to send me to the most needy people in the country for food?
I think that is the beautiful thing I'm learning in this season of life. When life doesn't make sense.... That is when God creates his greatest work!
The part of Elijah's story that has captured my attention in the last few years, however, is the fact that to follow God with complete faith and confidence, Elijah had to rest and listen.
God's voice is often heard best in or after moments of quiet and rest.
The world clamors for our attention every moment of every day!
The thing I have learned about myself is that the quiet and stillness grounds me.
It allows me the opportunity to connect with God on a deeper level and gives me confidence that I do not naturally have to move forward and stand my ground on what I know to be right.
At the same time it allows me the space to hear and question God for the things I might not fully understand.
The truth I am learning is that when something is broken, it is in pieces. It can be incredibly difficult to put back together and it requires patience and time to fully reconstruct.
We live in a broken world, so of course life doesn't make sense.
When God says "leave" He can be directing you away from the thing that would completely break you will and spirit. A will and spirit that He designed you with for a holy purpose. When he tells others to "stay" He knows that this is an area that they were designed to take on.
The different roles we play in life do not mean that one of us is less than another. God created us all with a intricate design that only He fully understands. We live in a broken world and we live as broken versions of our true selves. God's greatest desire is to see us become the true self He designed us to be. If we try to force our lives back together with glue and sheer will power we will break crucial parts of ourselves. When we listen closely and let God direct the re-assembly of our sin-broken lives, we can begin to see how He created us.
God sent us His Son, Jesus, as an example of what an unbroken life looks like, but all of our personal breaks are in different places. If we look to one another for the way to "fix" our brokenness we will forever remain broken. We are looking into a clouded mirror. When we look to God for our healing, we begin to examine the person we were intended to be. We can invite Him in to walk through our own story. When we do that we see all the places that He was with us when we felt alone and isolated. We find that He surrounded us with just the people we needed for that moment in our healing. As we examine our story through God's eyes we begin to correctly re-assemble the broken pieces of our lives and it is in that we find our true selves as God designed us.
1 comment:
I love your honesty . It is hard to grasp God's purposes and direction. C.S. Lewis has many books and essays on this question of why doesn't God stop evil all the time. He wrote a book called "The Problem of Pain" and he also wrote a book about his wife,Joy. They met and married later in life. She died of cancer. He was broken-hearted and couldn't understand why God would let her die when he had so little time with her. His insights are thought-provoking and straight forward.
Another thing I want to mention is we see people from the "outside" and don't always see what is going on inside of them. So we may think they have it all together but we don't know what their journey is really like. Like you said we are all broken. I thank God for all the good and bad in my life. It has made me who I am. Thank you for this wonderful article.
Post a Comment