I'm having one of those days... One of the days where you feel like you woke up with your head on sideways. Everything is so out of whack. The baby won't sleep, so she's screaming at me instead... I'm hungry, but can't figure out what to eat... I can't find my favorite shirt, so I have to wear something else. I can't stand these days.
So what do I do? I spend my day searching... Searching for a toy Audrey will want to play with... Searching for something to eat... Searching for my favorite shirt... And then I realize what the problem is.
Not once today have I even bothered searching for God. It's a daily thing, ya know? We'll never find him completely while we're on the Earth, but we still must search. Some days He feels so far away. Like Donald Miller put it in Blue Like Jazz, "If God was on dirt road walking toward me, He was on the other side of a hill, and I hadn't begun to look for Him anyway."
We don't expect to find our car keys by sitting on the couch. So why in the world am I expecting to find God that way? I listen to music that reminds me of His glory, I read books that demonstrate His mercy... But not once today have I talked to Him about where He is in my life. We complain about how God just isn't showing up in certain areas of our life, when we should be complaining about ourselves. About how we always have something more important to do than pray, or read our Bibles. Even if it is talking to Him about something small like, "God, thank you so much for allowing me to have shoes to protect my feet," when we get ready in the morning, at least we are talking to him.
We always feel like we haven't found our place in our group of friends, our church, or this world. We just need to find our place with God and it will start to fall together. No, we aren't going to figure everything out. Not a chance! But we can at least be on the right "side of the hill" looking for Him and trying to find our path. Next time I feel like everything is going wrong in my day, I'm going to be sure to look to Him for my joy in the day. I'll leave you with the words to a song by one of my favorite artists, Nichole Nordeman:
Real to Me by Nicole Nordeman
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uObOnYZ-7E0)
Every time I try to find you
Every road comes back around
Just another hoop to jump through
Another mile of covered ground
I am weary of the answers
More theory and cliché
They raise the letter of the law like a banner
'Til you're small and far away
All the questions in my head
Are from my heart instead
Be real to me now
That's all I'm asking
Be real to me now
Every scribe and every scholar
No winners in this debate
Everybody seems to stand up taller
When you're easy to explain
I don't need to know what I don't know
Just got to let it go
Be real to me now
That's all I'm asking
Be real somehow
More than anything
More than anything
So lay down the sword
And put away the doctrine
Love a little more, love a little more
'Cause everybody's broken
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Too true.
ReplyDeleteAlthough, sometimes it's IN the search when you realize that the one thing you're pushing away is the only thing you need. It's like how all people learn things differently... some of us are visual, photographic learners; some of us learn best hands-on; and still, some of us can't seem to get anything through our heads until we've beat the dead horse so many times until he comes back to life and kicks us in the head, then we're like---"well, duh."
For some of us, myself included, we wouldn't realize the importance and necessity that God requires and desires for our lives. When you see people searching, I think you can only do one of two things:
1. Take them by the hand and lead them where they need to be. If they're willing and open-minded, they'll follow--even if it's just out of curiosity.
2. Leave them be. Eventually, they'll hopefully learn that when your world is hanging by a string and all you have left is the love of God, you just have to tie a knot and hang on.
Very nice post. :) Stupidface.