January 18, 2009

I've been on the road this last week. You've perhaps been on your first "virtual road trip" with me. For many of us we're old traveling companions having roamed all over the world together. Travel is a part of my life. I find the most glorious times with God as I travel but the reality is it's not always that way. Depending on how you define "glorious" that is. There is rarely a time that I'm traveling when I do not hear specifically from God through His Word, the counsel of the Holy Spirit or a life lesson but sometimes these lessons come hard. For me I have been focusing on what it really and honestly means to cast my cares on God this week. I've been meditating on what it would really look like to be still and know He is God. I've pondered the virtues and pitfalls of being pragmatic and melancholy as a person. How much of my character is steeped in the fact that I want to have a safety net in place in case God doesn't come through? How much of each of our characters are like this?

That's scary stuff to be musing over in the middle of a snow desert when all around you are convinced by beauty that God really is there and really does have a plan. Snow sparkles in the moonlight while black peaks stand like sentinels over the valley below and I am quite sure of God's presence but stuck down deep somewhere is the nagging question....what if He really doesn't care? What if He's really indifferent? What does this say about me?

We all want control over our destiny. We don't like the idea of giving up that control. We're fine with walking to the edge but we're not so good at the jumping off part. Life pushes us over sometimes and we have to hold onto faith in those moments because it's all there is but we're not so good at looking out over the black nothingness and jumping willingly honestly believing that Jesus is out there somewhere waiting to lead us on. But He is. He is.

God has asked us to believe the unthinkable in order to get to Him. Faith. The substance of things hoped for. The evidence of things not seen. Without this there is no way to please God. Without this there is no way to live for the King and serve the Kingdom. Without this there is no way to have any framework or context for believing at all. This isn't so much about being a glass half empty person or a glass half full person. This is about whether or not we really believe any of this stuff. And it's about understanding that how God goes about bringing His Kingdom in our lives is His business and it very well may not look like we'd thought. In fact often it's nothing like we'd thought. We have to stop thrashing about trying to force something, anything to happen. Trying to force God into moving even if it's to rescue our behinds when we get stuck on some rock shelf above tree line on a mountain we were never supposed to climb in the first place.

Be still and know that I am God I hear Him say as the snow snakes it's way across the tar colored pavement. Cast your cares on me because I care for you He says beside the silver frozen lake. It all blends together. He's asking us to have faith but He's leaving clues and proof everywhere if we'll only pay attention. They just aren't the clues we'd usually like. We'd like an angel, or a pillar of fire but let's be honest, when God actually did those things they didn't work. The very people who marched through a dry lake bed between walls of dammed up water held by nothing that then collapsed upon their enemies destroying them are the same people who were bowing down to a golden calf a short spell later. I choose to believe cutting all safety nets for the hundredth time. I choose to believe in spite of myself. I choose to believe as we each must for there is no other way. I choose to believe because I will not bow to the idol of unbelief.

Onward Comrades,