We found your journal.
You went through a season of life where you fought circumstances. You were mad at God because prayers went out of your mouth and fell right to the floor.
You wanted to get married, but it happened so very slowly. Maybe not at all, yet. Or it happened so quickly, now you’re thinking you made a big mistake. In any event, you tried to change the situation. God isn’t fair, you write. But later, things somehow got tolerable.
You moved on to other complaints.
You wanted children, but couldn’t manage. God isn’t fair, you said to yourself. When you finally got that longed-for child, you posted a quick “God is good” on Facebook. Then you moved on to wanting a second child because you didn’t want the first one to be lonely. It didn’t happen for a while. God isn’t fair, you wrote, again. When the second arrived, you tweeted about it (Do they call it X’d these days?), crediting God’s mercy. But even as you wrote it, you were bugged that now you had two boys, and had wanted a girl to balance and complete your family. God isn’t fair, you wrote.
And so on. Each of the subsequent chapters entitled “Money,” “Jobs,” “Health,” “Vacations,” “Cars,” and “Houses,” had similar meditations, with similar conclusions, and a brief word of acknowledgment to God when He came through (followed with multiple exclamation marks to show uttermost sincerity). But you also rhetorically asked, did I really have to wait so long/pray so hard/suffer so much?
At times of key disappointment, you noted how you got mad and stopped praying or attending Christian meetings. You brought back some old sins or started committing new ones. In so doing, you basically failed every test, manifesting your immaturity at most every turn.
Maybe it wasn’t your journal we found. It could have been mine. This is us.
At any rate, at so many points of incredible tension, we had no realization that anything spiritual was transpiring. Just human aggravations.
And then, at some future moment, the light of God breaks through and we realize, as Jacob did, that “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it” (Gen. 28:16).
By nature, we are spiritually dull. Our reactions are authentic, which is good, but they tend to be hobbled by immaturity. Thankfully, we have a God who is kind, and long-suffering. He is well aware that we fail to recognize Him most of the time. In the thick of our imprudent attitudes, He does not respond with city-leveling rage.
The grace we have in Christ keeps us in a protected fellowship. If it were up to us, we would have been lost long ago. In fact, when we finally wake up, we’ll realize the many times the Lord was with us in a place or situation. It will also be stunning how foolishly we behaved in His close proximity. That’s been my experience exactly, when I later told Him, “I’m sorry, I didn’t even know your presence. I can’t believe I did those things. I wish I’d never said them. I wish I’d never even felt them.”
The good news is that grace teaches us. As we finally become conscious of the way we acted, and the impoverished views we held, we, like Jacob, also find ourselves on an upward learning trajectory:
“Jacob was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven’” (Gen. 28:17).
And what did he learn? Godly fear, awe, and the lessons of place, house, and gate–all invisible, and heavenly things. That is when our spiritual understanding begins to develop.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on John Myer
Featured Image by F. Muhammad from Pixabay
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