Over Smoothies and Icecream.......

A friend and I were eating ice cream and sipping smoothies yesterday and both of us were lamenting the circumstances of life that we find ourselves in. Nothing very earth shattering, just unfulfilled expectations of a God that doesn't guarantee that our expectations are also His. I asked her what does it all do to her faith, she said, "faith, sometimes I wonder if I have ever truly trust God for anything in my life more than a few minutes." Me too, I said, Me too.

I had planned my life differently, so had she. In a nice little box where our expectations would all be met. Yes, there is suffering, but we were to come through it "leaping and shouting and praising God." Then God decided to touch our lives by withholding the very thing (s) we felt we could not live without, and the "props" that go with them. Our own petty comforts, triumphs, and feel goods that keep us believing that we are still in control. We all have them. I think for a great deal of years I honestly didn't know that I used them to my advantage to manipulate life into something that "I" could manage; a word of affirmation, a job admired, significance sought for and gained, being sought after.....to name a few. Notice in my list is nothing about God. It is all about me, what I want to feel comfortable with, to navigate through life trying to make sense of a fallen, messed up place. That is one of the lessons that I am learning. Life doesn't revolve around me. I have preached that to my kids, and lately have found myself going all the way back to childhood reliving lessons I thought were already learned.

What does this have to do with faith? Everything. No I am not where I want to be. No, I am not the paragon of virtue that I thought I would be at this stage of my life.

Ken has been preaching through the book of Jonah. Now that is one prophet I thought I would never, ever identify with. After all, he runs from God knowing full well who God is, calling Him almighty, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness. Then he relents of his life more times than I can count. Read the 4th chapter:

Jonah 4

¹ But Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. ² He prayed to the LORD, "O LORD, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. ³ Now, O LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live."

⁴ But the LORD replied, "Have you any right to be angry?"

⁵ Jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. ⁶ Then the LORD God provided a vine and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the vine. ⁷ But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the vine so that it withered. ⁸ When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah's head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, "It would be better for me to die than to live."

⁹ But God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?"

"I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die."

¹⁰ But the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. ¹¹ But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?

I identify with Jonah's anger in a big way. I know that He has told us that He works through suffering. That we shouldn't be surprised when suffering comes into our lives. But, I have been ticked with Him. You know suffering is only suffering when it hurts. When our false images of God come crashing down, when faith is really something that you trust in but don't see, when we really aren't in control of anything that happens. Ken also reminded us that even though we might be frustrated by the way the book ends, someone had to write it. Someone who had gotten a lot less enamored by himself, someone that in the end realized that the world does not revolve around himself. Powerful.

Another friend sent me this quote:

"I know those moods when you sit there utterly alone, pining, eaten up with unhappiness, in a pure state of grief. You don't move towards me but desperately imagine that everything you have ever done has been utterly lost and forgotten. This near-despair and self-pity are actually a form of pride. What you think was a state of absolute security from which you've fallen was really trusting too much in your own strength and ability... what really ails you is that things simply haven't happened as you expected and wanted.

In fact, I don't want you to rely on your own strength and abilities and plans, but to distrust them and to distrust yourself, and to trust me and no one and nothing else. As long as you rely entirely on yourself, you are bound to come to grief. You still have a most important lesson to learn: your own strength will no more help you to stand upright than propping yourself on a broken reed. You must not despair of me. You may hope and trust in me absolutely. My mercy is infinite."

John of Landsburg, A Letter from Jesus

Couldn't have said it better myself.