Follow up to my last post

In my last post, I wondered where God was. I forgot, apparently, that He is omni-present (ubiquitous for those who like big words). If I cannot see Him, it is because I have closed my eyes; if it feels He is far from me, it is because I have run away.

I watched Ben Hur tonight with my mother. In one scene, he is visiting his mother and sister in the valley of the lepers and I found myself asking as he left, "Why doesn't he just take them to Jesus? He could heal them." Yet when my own heart is troubled, I look inside myself for an answer that I know isn't in there, rather than going to the One Who made my heart in the first place.

I asked myself why I did this during the movie and the only answer I could come up with is that Jesus was physically there at the time. One could reach out and touch him, talk to him, eat with him, and see just how real he was, as though he is somehow less real because he is no longer in a physical body on this earth, as though he no longer has power because he can no longer touch us directly and make us whole.

I just finished The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and in it, Douglas Adams talks about the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, a creature so stupid that it assumes if you can't see it, it can't see you. Thus, the way to save yourself from being eaten by it is to wrap a towel around your head so there's no way you can catch a glimpse of it. It's funny, yes, but it's what we do with God. We can't see Him, ergo, He can't see us.

I still feel like Frankenstein's monster (those who have only seen the movies and not read the book will not be able to comprehend my full meaning), and yet I see hope, not a hope in myself or that I will be able to change what I have become, but a faith that God either is able to change me into something human or that there is a purpose in what I am.

In church on Tuesday, I heard (I missed it to attend my brother's college graduation) that we went over how to trust God. It is a bold topic, particularly considering that the speaker struggles with it himself just by virtue of being human.

I was chatting with a friend from college recently on this very same topic. She's going to India and then hopefully, Bhutan for three years and possibly the rest of her life to be a missionary. I joked about her finding a husband there, some sherpa who dwelt among yaks or that she'd find the Abominable Snowman not quite so abominable, but roguish, with a bit of charm and a British accent. After the jokes, though, she said that she was ok with whatever God had for her. I asked how she could trust God so fully and she said that trusting God is a choice she has to make every day.

Too often, I think, we either trust God with the small things (how often have you ever prayed, "God, please help me find a parking spot."?) and not the big ones or we trust Him with the big ones but on a far-in-the-future basis (i.e., "I believe He will some day, but for now, I'm on my own."). Trusting God for things is something we have to choose to do daily, nay, more often even than that. We have to trust Him with the big things as well as the small ones. We have to trust that the day we are living in at the moment has a greater purpose than simply to get us to the day that matters. We must trust that there is a good end to all that happens, not because we have control, but because we don't. Trust in God, and make that decision to trust in Him every day.