In Miracles and Misery

Sometimes something wonderful can happen - a clean bill of health after months of chemotherapy, or a miraculous pregnancy in a womb that seemed broken down and locked up - only to be shortly followed by misery - the cancer is back, or your baby has died.

Sometimes the miraculous brings a false sense of intimacy with God. After all, how easy it is to offer up praise, smiles, laughter, and song when the impossible is blown away like dust by the breath of God. But thankfulness for my comfort or health and acknowledgement of God's favor and miraculous work is not the same as love or trust or dependence.

Sometimes misery also yields a false sense of closeness to God. In fresh pain, we, who say we believe in Christ and the power of God, cry out to Him. We pour our heart out, we pray diligently for healing, help, comfort, and mercy. But asking and wanting and continuing to trust that God has a perfect plan is not the same as building a deeper relationship with the One who creates and saves us.

Some day, after weeks or months or years of the crying out and praying, the urgency of the prayer starts to fade. The fresh pain becomes a dull ache, an empty spot, a gnawing bitterness or a heavy grief that becomes just another part of who you are and what this life means. When God seems not to answer, or the grievous emotions subside but never completely disappear, it is so easy to stop petitioning Him...or to just stop listening to Him. Maybe He's not saying anything anyway.

I have convinced myself that saying my prayers and speaking out that God has the perfect plan is drawing me into a closer relationship with Him. In reality, I have not made time to listen to Him, read His word, or really spend much time with Him. It becomes easier and easier to make excuses not to attend a worship service.

The Lord says, "These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And their worship of me is nothing but man-made traditions learned by rote." (Isaiah 29:13)

God reminds me that my acknowledgement of and trust in Him is but the tip of the iceberg. He also desires me to love Him and spend time with Him, not to gain miracles or healing, but simply to enjoy Him...to be made whole in a spiritual sense more than a physical sense.

"Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the Lord, and whose deeds are done in a dark place, and they say, 'Who sees us? Who knows us?' You turn things around! Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay, that what is made would say to its maker, 'He did not make me'; or what is formed say to him who formed it, 'He has no understanding'?" (Isaiah 29:15-16)

The wounds of loss, illness, discomfort and misery can build a wall. Even when we know God can see over and through the wall, we turn our backs to the wall like small children squinting shut our eyes tightly, convinced that because we can't see Him, He can't see us.

I have deeply hidden plans and have made decisions in the dark of late...simply by excluding the Lord, not really listening to Him, not attempting to forge a relationship with Him. Religion is not the same as relationship, and Isaiah has brought it to my attention that I have fooled myself into thinking my relationship with God has been growing.

The good news is that from this point forward, the miracles and miseries of the last year really can still be used to bring me closer to God. I can see now that they made me religious, keeping the focus on me, my grief, my problems, my cries to God, what God will do for me. And we all have the opportunity to learn from those mistakes, those revelations of our mistakes, and to approach things differently.

And God is there the entire time. Waiting for me to have these revelations and turn back to listening to Him and talking to Him from my heart.

"And God will be the stability of your times, a wealth of salvation, wisdom and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is his treasure." (Isaiah 33:6)

Saving from all the empty spots and the walls I can put up. Wealth without regard to material possession or money. Stability in the miracles and the misery.