Finding God In The RuinsSample

Shaking My Fist

God hasn’t answered all of my questions. And he certainly hasn’t “worked all things out for the good” in any way I would’ve expected.

And still there have been other times when he showed up with only a quiet whisper into my spirit, yet fully revived these dried up bones. He used foolish things like cornfields and bike rides, like my wife and her witty sense of humor that can clear my sorrow away like a leaf blower.

Sometimes it feels as if God has only invited himself into my pain, when I had hoped to be invited into his healing. My expectation was that he would make the pain leave me. That if the pain were little birds nesting in my heart, he would know when it was time for them to go and he’d toss them out of me. But some of them never seem to fly away. And I am certain, the older I get, that some of them never will.

It’s not okay. These birds weren’t meant to nest in me. They were supposed to soar right on past me, beating their wings until I couldn’t see the threat of them anymore. But their wings were clipped, and for reasons I don’t understand, they wound up in my heart. Like I said, it’s not okay. It will never be okay.

But there they are, just the same. And I have felt that if God were truly God, he would shoo them away, or starve them off until they died one by one. But for those things left unredeemed, pain can be a lifetime mortgage. I will pay on it, and I can learn to manage it, but it’s not going anywhere. But it will not be all that is me. It does not complete me. While it remains, God also will remain. He will dwell within me among three thorns, and among three prayers for their removal. He will provide his compassion and care with cornfields and bike rides and laughter and love…especially love.

If my sister doesn’t survive her fight with cancer, I will be wrecked – and I won’t pretend I shouldn’t be. And I will tell God what a liar he is and shake my fist at him for all the bad things that happen. I won’t ask him to sign a consent form for my bad behavior. I will walk my cul-de-sac in protest. I will tell others what a fraud he is and that he kills the people other people need. And I may even abandon him. But after some time, after I get past the secondary emotion that is anger and find the pain beneath it, I imagine he will do what he does – what he has always done. What it will be, I don’t know – but I imagine there will be love in it, because up until now, there has always been love in it.