I don’t talk to God. Well, I talk toward God I think. I tell Him what I want, where I’m struggling, but it feels like I give it to him in voicemail format.
“Hey God, it’s me Clayton. Just calling to let you know I still feel anxious about the future. I realize I’m supposed to trust you and all, but I’m finding it difficult. My mind just won’t let up on this future thing. Do you think you could get me some peace of mind? I’d appreciate it. Well, hope to talk to you soon.”
I’m fairly certain God listens to his voicemails, but it seems a pretty crappy way to communicate with a heavenly father figure.
I feel like God is at a party and he’s talking with someone else and I’m just trying to politely wait my turn to ask him a quick favor. Both parties, God and the other guy, glance over and acknowledge I’m there. They both know that what I have to say won’t take any time at all, but they keep talking anyway. Then I grow impatient and I leave. I jump on the computer after getting home and shoot God a quick email.
“Hey God,
Saw you at the party tonight and I wanted to ask you a quick question, but it seemed you were a bit occupied. I’m just feeling a little bit anxious about the future. I realize I’m supposed to trust you, but my mind won’t stop focusing on the future. I was wondering if I could get a little peace of mind? That’d be cool.
Well, thanks for reading.
Clayton”
God reads his email, but I feel my heavenly father figure should be a bit more accessible.
I think I’m struggling with communicating. How often or how many different ways can you tell someone you’d just like a little peace of mind before you actually get it? Perhaps the failure is on my end. In fact, that’s highly likely, but what do I do about it?
My mind won’t let me in to fix it so I figured I’d go to the supplier. Seems as though I’ve been on hold a while. I keep hearing that I’m a valued customer and I keep getting thanked for my patience, but I really just want to hang up. I’ll just get someone on the other end that doesn’t speak English or doesn’t have an answer so they send me to another operator. They’ll probably tell me just to read the manual. I’ve been reading the manual, that’s how I’ve discovered I have a problem, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of a solution.
Maybe I’ll try calling God again. Nuts, voicemail.
“Hey God, it’s me Clayton. Just calling to let you know I still feel anxious about the future. I realize I’m supposed to trust you and all, but I’m finding it difficult. My mind just won’t let up on this future thing. Do you think you could get me some peace of mind? I’d appreciate it. Well, hope to talk to you soon.”
3 comments:
Clayton --
In my experience, peace of mind is something that requires absolute trust in God, and a willingness to put worries for the future completely in His hands. This was driven home to me during the time immediately following the 2000 dot-com crash, when I did not have work and I had no idea how I would pay for groceries. I spent some sleepless nights in the living room (complete with sweat dripping off my forehead) before I finally realized that I was in way over my head. I'm not built for uncertainty. I can't see the future, therefore I worry about it; I hate the unknown (I'd rather have bad news and get the agony over with than deal with uncertainty), and I hate surprises. Hence the sweat. As it turned out, it wasn't so much a question of me asking God for peace of mind, as much as it was taking Him at His word that things would be handled. Subsequently, we always had just enough to make ends meet. The same happened after the mothballing of the last startup I worked for. We ended up leaning heavily on the Manna Cupboard to keep food on the table. Granted, it was not what I had in mind when God promised to take care of us, but we did not go hungry.
I think God sees us many times as an impatient child that always asks "are we there yet?" I've done that to Him a lot, along with the "can't you just tell me what will happen?" question.
As far as two-way communication, it happens all the time, though not exactly as one might expect. I've come to realize that every unbidden thought, every insight and every creative impulse I've ever had is in fact God speaking directly to me. There are a lot of moments where I realize that God has put words in someone's mouth -- and I'm supposed to pay attention. This is difficult for me -- I often tell God I need the two-by-four approach (smack across the forehead), and when I ask for this, I do get it.
Part of the problem about the future is that in order to know it, we would have to know all of the causes that generate the series of events that create it. We don't have that capacity. All we can do is fret, and that is something God has already told us we don't need to do if we trust Him.
I still worry about the future and I still gnaw my liver over things large and small, but every year it gets a little easier to simply ask God to handle things.
Just my $0.02...
Sounds like a modern day Psalm. Keep communicating, he is listening sometimes I think he is just making sure that we are.
I just have to say word.
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