"Good and Courageous Evangelists"

Monday, March 24, 2014

As I read the reflection today, I was already trying to figure out why it didn't speak to me the way all the others have so far -- challenging me and forcing me to rethink old, familiar ideas about God and my religious path.

I was all ready to blame the inexplicable back pain that brought me to the ground at least twice today and was only banished with ibuprofen PLUS two glasses of wine -- two more than I usually have on a school night.  That'd be enough to throw anybody off even a couple hours later, I thought.

Then I wondered -- is this a well-timed message?  I have been dealing with anger at the meaninglessness of death and perhaps even unresolved "Why, God?" issues from seven years ago.  Issues not helped by the shocking episode of The Good Wife, which I apparently signed on to with just enough time to fully catch up and appreciate pseudo-live the moment when they pulled the rug out from under us.

Which is how I felt -- but only ever so briefly.  Long enough to remind me that I do believe, at least.

I thought about how I was afraid that my faith would prove a casualty of losing Dad so senselessly.  Of how I was afraid to pray for his healing because I already knew God would say no, and I was afraid that it would break my heart if God said no or -- even worse -- the certain faith that has blessed all of my life.  I remember my uncle with his head head in his hands, perhaps even asking me not just while I was present, what God could have been thinking.  He was doing so much good, he could have done so much more, how could this be the plan?

I've been growing increasingly angry -- with one thing and a hundred others -- about issues I thought I had dealt with, but perhaps ALL of it can be answered by remembering what I am supposed to have always known -- what I have always taken it for granted that I have known.  What I have never had to examine and question and realize or even hold to particularly tight except maybe this once.

I know God loves me.  I know He loves me unconditionally.  I feel it all the time.

I ended up losing my faith in the power of prayer in my father's death precisely BECAUSE, I think, my faith in the basic premise is unshakable.  It's the only explanation I could come up with -- prayer doesn't work like that.  If you tilt your head and squint, you can just about see how it IS kind of tacky and disrespectful even if it seems like a straightforward request that would increase the amount of good in the world.  Why is your pain, your issue, so special that He should overturn the natural laws of the beautiful universe He made for you?

Why can't you wait for heaven for perfection?

But that does make it harder to explain -- to explain that I've always felt taken care of and loved by God.  That I've never really doubted because it's just so obvious all around me, and how can I thank Him for all the tiny little ways He's taken care of me but not blame Him for the big bad scary ones?  Because I can see the pattern.  Because it's somehow even more beautiful that He set up the universe and gave it a push and arranged it so that dominoes would eventually fall for me in this tiny way. Surely that's not all He had the dominoes do, but I was part of the consideration of the infinite in this small way.

I don't know what else the dominoes are doing.  And I try to trust that He does even when it seems like the dominoes have really taken a wrong turn.  It's harder, God knows only too well, He's listened to me whine about it.  But my faith changed shape when my father died.  I lost a lot of my faith in prayer and pretty much everything I believed about the nature of our relationship with God changed radically.

But there was one thing I always knew, that today my reflection book asks me to wonder why I don't trust instinctively.

It must be so hard out there, in this cruel world, without what I've called the Gift of Certainty.  Without always knowing, unassailably, that God loves us, every one.

One little moment in an unexpectedly hard day, another proof that God took a split second of time in His creation to comfort me on this day by setting up the dominoes to fall for billions of years just right.  Thank You.