The Long Walk Home

Tiredness makes me:

Sleepy
Grumpy
(thinking of dwarves yet?)
Cry randomly all over the place.
Get confused at the huge amount of choice in supermarkets.
Get looked at sympathetically by checkout ladies by my inability to answer their aray of complex questions. (cashback? I don’t know, help me, reward card? yes possibly but I can’t remember, what? eh? shhhh)
Sob on the phone to my Mum.
Spend the afternoon in a daze in bed.
Utterly bemused at how time flows past when there aren’t any sessions to go to. Time passes and I haven’t sat in 3 meetings, had food with many people and had two hours off in the afternoon. Somehow I’ve stumbled to the end of the day.
Confused as to what to do with all this choice of how to spend my time.

I’m with Sartre, I’m going to spend the rest of the evening staring at a tree crying, wishing I had it’s lack of choice.

Yes, that time has come. Once again I get into a car, drive oddles of miles up the country and stay in the delights of the Qunita. Every time I manage to resist the need to buy a T Shirt from the centre declaring that I have ‘binta the Quinta’. But I have been there a lot of times. Housemates have been abandoned, e-mails left unanswered, blogs unattended and although I’m sad to leave I get to have fun doing what I love, hanging out with my mates, working in a team and generally getting to see God do some stuff. I’ve bought my Qunita survival kit, consisting of lots of fruit, dutch blitz and new clothes to feel happy in. I’ve put good tunes on the ipod for those introvert moments, I’ve even baked cakes to provide the lovely staff team with energy. All I need to do now is go.

“But if I weren’t leaving you
I don’t know what I would do
But the more I go the less I know
Will the fire still burn on my return?
Keep the path lit on the only road I know
Honey all I know to do is go”
(indigo girls)

Tonight we had a sermon on the epic showdown between David and Goliath. Or between a 9ft tall man and the Creator of the Universe. Our preacher man pointed out a few things about the way God does things. Which again hit the spot of my agonising thoughts over the last few months, anyone would think that someone was out there wanting to sort my head out a bit on this score.

Anyway. The first point was: God uses people in his purposes (the preacher actually didn’t use that wonderful alliteration, I made that up all by myself, are you proud?). Which sounds simple enough, but is a pretty balmy thought. I mean, people like you and me who get it Oh so wrong lots of the time, he uses us. Weird. A couple of questions were posed; “Have you got out of the habit of expecting to be used for God?” and “When did you last say to God, I’m here, use me?”. Hmmm. Ponder those for a moment.

The next couple of points reminded us that God is the central figure in this drama, because David puts him there. David knows his God, he knows his strength and character, and trusts in that relationship with his life. God’s provision is immeasurable, God is a God who provides. A God who knows how to look after his people. We can trust and depend on Him.

Whatever the random warblings of my brain about who God is and how he works, the reality is that I am in a relationship with Him and that He wants to use me for his purposes. I give up, it’s too hard to argue with God all the time. Time out, time to sit back and marvel a bit at His character. I’m sure more wrestling will follow soon but for now I give up. God works in ways beyond ours, and tonight that is going to have to be enough. I’m reassured about the way he works and his character, and the crazy grace that is kind enough to reassure me. The timing couldn’t be more perfect and I head off to conferences this week with a little more certainty that the Maker of the Universe has good stuff for us to do there, people to transform, lives to change and that He wants little old me to play a part in it all. Weird but reassuring.

There are many things I don’t get about God and how he works in this world. There are questions that will not leave. There are things I don’t understand, especially our language that claims his work over many random things in our lives; so God got me my 2:1, God found me a parking place, God found me a place to live. The question is, if God did do these things, why? And why did my friend get a 3rd? Why do many people live homeless? Why didn’t he solve the suffering in the world? Why didn’t he make my mate better? There seems to be a lot of inconsistency when we talk about God’s work in this world. And I’m sure many could come up with a list of responses to these questions, but sometimes we are still left with more questions than answers.

I’ve been reading Philip Yancey’s new book on prayer, a book that asks all these questions and more, a book that makes me cry with relief as I realise that these loud, unanswerable questions are not the end of faith. But, in some way, the cries and struggles and wrestling of true faith. Having a relationship with the Maker of the Universe will lead us to these places. It’s a book that is reminding me to carry on wrestling with God in these queries, doubts, incomprehension and despair.

The questions that don’t go away aren’t the sign of the need to walk away from this relationship but they call me to cry out more, to batter on heavens door, to kick and punch and shout, to ask with boldness, to desperately ask for more mercy and to address all of these cries to the one I don’t understand. In that I hope to find out more of His character, so I can trust that he knows what he is doing. Because I don’t know how to live without God. But sometimes it seems to hard to live with him.

Really I love this book because it says all the questions out loud without quickly jumping to the ‘right’ answers. It lets you sit with the questions and realise that their presence doesn’t make faith run away. God is big enough for the questions. And in articulating them I realise I’m not asking them in a vacuum but in the context of a relationship. I cry out, ‘I don’t understand’, but I cry out in the arms of the one who does. Sometimes that’s enough.

Of course, sometimes that’s not enough, sometimes that seems like a neat solution to make me feel better. And in those times the rain really does seem to be coming down too hard. In those times I stand, not alone with my weak emptiness but with the many others who are traveling this journey. We stand together in the rain, the strong, the weak, the hopeful, the despairing. We face the rain together and in that find the stronger hope in the darkness.