He has not forsaken us

One of the deepest emotional pains that one can feel, I believe, is the fear or belief that God is not love, or that one is not loved by God, or that God's grace is not sufficient to cover one's sins, or that God is distant and displeased (they are all permutations of the same feeling, I think). When one has known and seen God, and experienced His love and mercy, He becomes the deepest desire of one's heart; He overwhelms us with the torrents of His love, and we respond with adoration. So at any point after that, if we begin to fear that we have lost that love through some sin we have committed or righteousness we have left undone, the pain of that fear will penetrate to the depths of our heart like a dagger that stabs and a club that crushes.

Unfortunately, the emotional nature of this fear makes it incredibly difficult to counter! Reminding ourselves of the truth of God's love, going back to the cross and remembering the pain He suffered on our behalf, and repeating the assurances of His grace to ourselves time and again are all good things to do, and they can help restore a soul to joy and confidence in Christ - but I think it is also good to cry to God in the midst of our fear, as the author of Psalm 6 does. For an emotional pain there must be an emotion outlet and an emotional healing.

"O Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger,
Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure.
Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak;
O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled.
My soul also is greatly troubled;
But You, O Lord - how long?
Return, O Lord, deliver me!
Oh, save me for Your mercies' sake!
For in death there is no remembrance of You;
In the grave who will give You thanks?" - Psalm 6:1-5

The truth that he knows - God's mercy and deliverance of His people, His righteousness and healing power - is interspersed with what he feels and fears - that God is angry with him, and has forsaken him, and is abandoning him to death; the desperate plea of v3 captures it perfectly: "But You, O Lord - how long?" In his head, he knows that in God is deliverance and salvation; he knows that God will rescue him and not abandon him. But in his heart, he feels that God has already forsaken him - that the pain and the trials have continued longer than he can bear already, and that God is not with him in them. It's a place we've all been in, I think, particularly if a specific trial or struggle (read: external problem or internal sin issue) has lingered with us for any length of time. You said You would sanctify me, Lord! Why do I still struggle and fail so much with this one temptation? And You said You would be with me always and work all things for good, Lord! Why is my life such a wreck of circumstances, then? Why do my endeavors wither and die instead of prospering when I'm trying to follow You?

But there is beauty even in that emotional plea, twisted as it is by the lies the world has spun about the impermanence of love and the impossibility of grace, because he is trying desperately to feel and believe the truth that he knows - and because, at the end, there is hope. Our cries to God do not have to be perfect or sinless for Him to hear us; He hears our weeping and our supplication, no matter how weak and frail and faithless we are, and He will receive our prayers. He has not forsaken us, and He never will; His love has not failed us and His grace will endure through all eternity.

A flower in blossom

Sometimes I think we don't actually desire God quite as much as we think we do - or at least, I think co-existent with our desire to know Him and be near to Him is a desire to pull back, to withdraw, to refuse the vulnerability and surrender which necessarily come with knowing anyone intimately, but especially God. You can see the same push-and-pull of warring desires quite frequently in romantic relationships, to give a more accessible example: each person loves the other, and wants to trust and know (and be trusted and known by) the other, but there is an undercurrent of what can most simply be called fear that holds them back from fully letting go into mutual trust, vulnerability, knowing, and nearness. Each can be so desperate to earn and keep the other's love that they refuse to fully open themselves to the other (for fear of rejection), and as a result close themselves off to the love they most deeply crave. It is bitterly ironic that the direct consequence of the actions taken in search of love, in the striving to deserve love, is the construction of a barricade against the full force of that love when it finally comes.

And if it is such a bitter irony in the context of human relationships, is it not even more bitter when it occurs in the relationship between man and God? In a relationship with another person, the fallibility and imperfection of humanity can be used as a rationalization for the fear of vulnerability and genuine love, but with God that excuse falls short. The fear is exposed. Why do we hold back from the actions that would draw us nearer to God? Why is any flimsy excuse or distraction allowed to pull us away from our prayers or prevent us from meditating on Him throughout the day? It is not - it cannot be - that we fear He will reject us. If anything, our lack of devotion and piety would be greater reason for Him to reject us. More importantly, however, we know that His love is unfailing and enduring; we saw that He was willing even to suffer and die because of that love. No! - it is the love itself that we fear. It is too great, too high, too mighty; it is too far beyond our comprehension, and we fear it because its bounds are unknown - and, we have heard, unknowable.

A love without reason or end, a love that endures the scorn or indifference we show to it, a love that perseveres unchanging despite our fickle attention and attempts at returning it, a love that forgives, a love that knows us completely and does not let go, a love that is determined to hold on to us no matter how much we fight to be rid of it, a love that refuses to be angry no matter how we yell and storm and try to hurt it - that is the love God has for us, and that is the thing we fear most and yet most deeply desire and need. If we could but open ourselves up to it - open up our hearts not caring if it killed us with the strength and glory of its torrents - I think we would find that all the tense, angry, self-conscious, anxious striving in our hearts would be washed away, and that our souls would relax and unfold like the petals of a flower in blossom under the light of the sun.

A rant about making decisions for the future

While randomly reading old archives on a recently discovered blog, To Love, Honor, and Vacuum, I found this quote:

"Just for fun, I recently asked readers on my Facebook page about the worst advice they had ever been given.
Many people seemed to regret their education. They didn’t pursue dreams because they were supposed to go to university, and now they have debt and no real joy in their jobs. Others, of course, regretted not getting an education in the first place."

This is the dilemma, isn't it? When you're trying to make choices about your future, do you invest in the education everyone thinks you should get, and potentially regret the sink of time, energy, and resources? Or do you forego the education to pursue what you think you want to do (or what you think God wants you to do), and later on have regrets because you aren't qualified for the jobs you want and your "dream" was just a passing whim of young adulthood?

I know that a lot of people - the prudent, cautious, "always have a back-up plan" people - advocate getting that education no matter what. Even if you don't plan on using it, apparently, it might be good to have at some unknown time in the future - if it isn't hopelessly outdated by then (for instance, getting a masters in a computing field now might not be that helpful twenty-five years from now when you're done being a stay-at-home mom and are looking to reenter the workforce!), or if your desires and outlook on life haven't totally changed over the years (somehow I don't think I'm going to be exactly the same person, with the same goals and priorities, when I'm nearing fifty... I'm hoping I'll have learned a lot more about life and about who I am!). Honestly, to me, it seems like it could be just a waste of your time, especially if it isn't something you're passionate about.

Steve Jobs, in his famous Stanford commencement speech, said this:

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

While I think it is really important to seek what God desires for you, and not just follow your heart blindly without His guidance, there is still a sense in which I emphatically agree with his words. If there is something your heart is burning for you to do, there is no point at all in getting a degree in a semi-related subject with better marketability just to have a back-up plan. I feel that if you're going to pursue something because it is your dream and the call of God in your life, you should pursue it wholeheartedly, without reservation or fear. If God is calling you in a specific direction - if your heart is longing to walk a certain path with Him - then put your hand to the plow and do not look back. Let Him be your safety net and your back-up plan. Trust Him with your worries and your fears and your questions about the future. If you can put your trust in a graduate degree to bring you food and financial stability in a time of crisis, surely you can find enough faith to trust the God and Creator of the universe to manage those same things.

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." - Matthew 6:28-33

Taste and see

I have so much to write about that it's overwhelming! But here is one small thought while I have a moment.

Sometimes I don't experience God's help and love and comfort because I push it away. I tell Him and myself that I don't deserve it, or that I don't need it (because I don't want to admit that I'm hurting and weak). So then as I sit there in my hurt, which is often self-inflicted, I start to question whether God cares about me. Obviously He does! He only feels distant because I am afraid to draw near to Him, because I am afraid to have weaknesses and needs and thus am afraid to receive His love.

"Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good;
Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!" - Psalm 34:8

If I refuse to eat or even taste the food that is offered to me, how can I judge whether or not He is good? And every time I have chosen to trust Him, I have seen that He is indeed very good, and that with trust come blessing and joy.

Nearsightedness

Finally, after at least six months of delay, I took myself over to the opthamologist's office this morning to get my glasses repaired. I ended up having to schedule an appointment for an eye exam and will get an entirely new set of lenses and frames because my current frames are irreparable, but that's beside the point. The point is that for a brief period of time my glasses were not with me but were in the hands of another person in another room where I couldn't see them or have access to them. Effectually, I was rendered rather blind for this period of time! I am extremely near-sighted and even with my good eye I can't see clearly more than six inches in front of my face (my bad eye is significantly worse).

When my vision is that bad and I don't have my glasses, I find myself actually feeling afraid, even when I know where I am and there is nothing threatening in the environment (my opthamologist's office is a very quiet and peaceful place). If I let myself, I'll even start breathing more quickly than normal, and I tend to hold on to something near me, like a table or counter, and keep my eyes focused on something close enough to see clearly. It is, at least for me, a rather stressful experience.

I noticed an analogy in it today, though. Maybe (I thought as I tried to keep my mind off my inability to see what was going on around me) my spiritual and emotional fears have a similar root cause. That is, maybe I am afraid of things like failure and rejection because my spiritual eyes have become nearsighted and I'm not using my glasses (the glasses of prayer and time spent with God in His word) to help me clearly see the bigger picture of His plan and the things of eternity. Honestly, I think that if I were able to more completely follow Paul's injunction in Colossians to "set [my] mind on things above, not on things on the earth", I would have far fewer fears in life. Maybe I wouldn't be so afraid of the people I love rejecting me, because I would be more assured of the unconditional and sufficient love of Christ holding me up through all trials and sorrows. Maybe I wouldn't be so afraid of failing in little everyday things (like cooking a good meal) because I would be more confident in the knowledge that I am perfect before God through the righteousness of His Son.

And maybe, if I weren't so filled with fears, I would be able to think of and reach out to other people more, because I wouldn't need to work so hard at protecting myself - and that would be a very good thing indeed.