Another holiday season has come and gone and I couldn't be happier. Without going into long, gory details that are both personal and private, the holiday season is usually not always the happiest of times for my extended and immediate family. Once again this holiday season was filled with tension, lost hope and a sense of helplessness in regards to members of the family that have lost their way and may never get it back.
I don't mean to sound flippant about the situation but most holiday seasons are filled with me just simply wondering what family tragedy or accident awaits us this year. Now don't get me wrong, I love watching my two boys open Christmas presents. Seeing them happy is really all I want nowadays, so the holidays aren't all bad. But when news comes that yet again something has happened that brings my family to a point of asking 'why' or 'when will this stop' and those questions are covered with tears of sadness and frustration, I now know that it is time for a major change in my life.
I have been telling people that I now want to only approach people and situations with nothing but honesty. I certainly don't want to hurt anyone so I will watch how I say things when I can, but I am desperate to figure out what is going on and what has gone wrong spiritually for myself and for members of my family. You see, I am starting to see after having long wondered it, that most of the time God is silent when we think He should speak. No, He's not dead nor is he uninterested, He just doesn't respond to us, prayers and life the way we have been taught or the way we think He should respond.
Perhaps I'm using the wrong word by saying God is silent. I think what I really am learning is that 'God's will will be done'.
There are people that have been prayed for for decades. These prayers are offered up by people of great faith and belief. Yet, I know in my own family, it seems that these prayers really are more pleas for God to change in people what they refuse to change in themselves. In other words, 'God make so-and-so happy and full of love'. Then 'so-and-so' goes out and does everything they can to not to be happy and full of love. Was the prayer not heard? Was it simply answered with 'no'? Or has God's will for that person be inacted a long time ago and praying for it to be different is both useless and arrogant? Who are we to pray for people to be the way 'we' want them to be and yet cloak it in the guise of wanting 'God's will for them'?
Let's pause for a minute. I believe God loves us. I believe God has a plan for us. I believe that prayer is important. This isn't a diatribe into whether or not God exists but it's more of a reexamination of how can we exist in accepting who we are and who people are that surround us. It's a quest for truth and honesty. Instead of constantly thinking I'm living outside the will of God because I'm on the railroad and not a pastor, I would like to find out how to embrace this will of God that has me working for the railroad? Follow me? Instead of constantly thinking I shouldn't use words that other people think are 'bad', perhaps I ask, 'well, how will God use that in me in a good way?' Or maybe I just quit worrying about it and simply be the best me that He has allowed to live for 38 years. Of course we need to heed His words and 'quit sinning' but I wonder if that simply means praying 'your will be done' and then living the best we can at that moment. We are so desperate to change others and ourselves that inevitably we forget who we are and who they are.
I have recently been reading scripture in a different way. I've been reading it for exactly what it says and not reading it and saying, 'now how can I make this fit into my life and make me feel better'. I think God is an honest God. I think he says what he means and means what he says. I think he's laid out a plan for understanding who He is and how to pray. It's blunt. It's honest and it doesn't fit what we normally do.
In Ecclesiastes chapter 3 it says: "I've also concluded that whatever God does, that's the way it's going to be always. No addition, no subtraction. God's done it and that's it. That's so we'll quit asking questions and simply worship in holy fear. Whatever was, is. Whatever will be, is. That's how it always is with God."
The book of Ecclesiastes is great. It's not a book so much about God, but about us. It's about how as humans are always trying to fill up our lives with so much other stuff that we miss the basics. We get consumed with comfort and normalcy and end up with neither. It clears the air of our misconceptions about life and God and prepares us to a clean slate for Christ. When I read the book it says a lot about not worrying about what is supposed to happen and embrace what is happening. Fear God and do what he tells you but 'Just as you'll never understand the mystery of life forming in a pregnant woman, so you'll never understand the mystery at work in all that God does.'
Are you getting it? Sometimes things happen for no other reason than they were supposed to happen. You can pray all you want to understand it, but guess what? you may never understand it. Sometimes people just are the way they are. You can pray for them to change but guess what? they often don't. When we don't expect people to take an active role in their own transformations we are being as silly as expecting a car to turn into a watch. This is also true for your own life. Quit expecting others to 'do their part' in order to make your little world better. Maybe they just aren't going to love you or be who you think they should be. Maybe they aren't going to 'walk the line' you expect of them. Maybe they have simply accepted who they are better than you have accepted who they are. Those of you in bad marriages, quit waiting for your spouse to change and make it better. Quit waiting for God to change them. Accept what they are bringing to the marriage and who they are. You have to find your place in that and not 'will it from them'. That's God's job, not yours. Either you can live with it or you can't. Those of you with children that are not behaving as you wish. You can pray for them to change all you want but until they are active in their own change you might as well rub a lamp and hope for a magic genie to appear and make it all better.
When Job was being put through hell in an effort to see whether or not he would turn from God or turn to God, Job and his friends spend much of the book questioning the actions of God and the mind of God in such a way that I think we can all relate to it. They try and assign meaning to everything as if God does things for any reason we can actually figure out. Much like we try to figure out tornados and predict them, Job and his friends want to question God and figure him out and in some way be able to 'control' their lives better. God unleashes on Job and the friends in an amazing rant about who He is and what He can do. I won't type it all out here but here's some highlights:
Where were you when I created the earth? Tell me, since you know so much. Who decided on it's size? Certainly you'll know that!..... Have you ever ordered the morning to 'get up' and the dawn, 'get to work'?..... Can you catch the eye of the beautiful Pleiades sisters or distract Orion from his hunt?....... Do you presume to tell me that I'm doing wrong? Are you calling me a sinner so you can be a saint?........ Can you shout in thunder the way I can? Go ahead, show your stuff. Let's see what you're made of, what you can do.
Job then asks forgiveness and says, 'I'm convinced: You can do anything and everything. Nothing and no one can upset your plans.'
I'm not trying to say that we are helpless in this life in choosing our own way and that we are merely robots in God's cosmic world. Hardly. What I'm saying is that we have a great freedom in this even though it doesn't seem like it. We can CHOOSE to accept what God has for us or we can CHOOSE to question him and beg him to CHANGE everything that we don't deem suitable. The freedom that I could find in my life by simply saying YOUR WILL BE DONE with me on the railroad would be liberating. The freedom that could be found in letting people be who they are and praying for them that God's will be done in their life would be liberating.
I am always fearful for my wife and kids' safety. I can't imagine life without them and so I often pray for their safety and protection. I think it's good to do this and that God hears it, BUT it certainly doesn't guarantee anything. What about those parents that lose kids everyday to murder, accidents or suicide? Were their prayers not heard and mine were? Are they less people because God protected my kids today but not theirs? Or was God's will simply done and it is up to us to figure out our role in that plan? These aren't easy questions to answer. I think I would just like for everyone to quit telling me what God can do..... I need to deal with what God has done and what He IS doing. I know that God CAN protect my kids. I also know that he may allow something to happen because it's a part of the plan. Can I deal with that? Can you?
Can we pray the prayer of Jesus the night before his crucifixion? Can we say 'My father if there is no other way than this, drinking this cup to the dregs, I'm ready. Do it your way'.
I'm becoming more convinced now that I'm in Goddard, KS for a reason. I think that I'm working for the railroad not because I've 'fallen from ministry' but because it's where I'm supposed to be. God seems silent to me at times simply because I'm doing all the talking. God seems silent to me in church because everyone else is clammoring about with building plans, class schedules and about how they are doing things differently. (I love how every church nowadays things they are the ones that are cutting edge and different. Whatever.) God seems silent in my family because we seem to have a repeating of problems and concerns that make me think every year is 1988. When will we just accept it for what it is and find our place in that and quit waiting for something to 'change'.
I will give you what Jesus says about prayer in the book of Matthew chapter 6. This is from 'The Message' translation.
5"And when you come before God, don't turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?
6"Here's what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.
7-13"The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They're full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don't fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and he knows better than you what you need. With a God like this loving you, you can pray very simply. Like this: Our Father in heaven, Reveal who you are. Set the world right; Do what's best— as above, so below. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil. You're in charge! You can do anything you want! You're ablaze in beauty! Yes. Yes. Yes.
14-15"In prayer there is a connection between what God does and what you do. You can't get forgiveness from God, for instance, without also forgiving others. If you refuse to do your part, you cut yourself off from God's part.
If you refuse to do your part, you cut yourself off from God's part. Well that's the rub isn't it? Isn't that why we do what we do? What is our part? What role are we to play? What do we control and what do we merely have to accept?
Latter in Matthew Jesus says: 'Don't bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need.'
What I need right now is peace. I need peace with myself and peace with those around me. I need to have peace that while I play an active part in God's plan, I don't write the script and I don't much of a say in the big picture of this production. I simply have to do the best I can with what I know. You can't fix yourself by trying to fix others. Sure, we are to 'help' others, but we aren't called on to 'fix' them. That's a job that God and God only has a say in.
God's not silent. He just hasn't been saying what I thought He should say. He hasn't been doing what I thought should be done. But as it turns out, I've been the one that hasn't been silent enough. I've gone on and on with God about what He 'should do' and what He 'could do' when I should have just sat in his presence and simply whispered, 'Thy will be done'. When something happens I want to be able to say, 'ok, this is the situation for what it is and what is my role to be in that situation.' I don't want to waste any more time or energy regretting the past and questioning God on what He's done with my life or someone else's life. It simply is what it is and 'thy will be done' with it.
