Thanks for sticking with me on this ride. I think I am almost done with this series…but since I am not the real author – I can’t be for sure. We will just have to sit and see, won’t we?
Here is one other thing I am learning – or more likely something I am again having to relearn 16 years into my walk with God:
… if you NEVER hear from Him again?
However, currently I don’t think it is healthy not to question. I think it puts us in bondage and God in a box. It makes our lives two dimensional and doesn’t allow me to be real with my self nor others. It doesn’t allow me to encounter God on deeper and deeper and deeper levels. It keeps me from being vulnerable and “naked” and learning to live without shame. So I will not answer with a pat Christian answer anymore. No, I will answer those questions with….more questions. Let’s try a retake:
Is there an option to still live in His reality, His truth, His way — holding to what I at least know for certain, beyond a shadow of doubt that He has shared with me and confirmed in other ways more than once…hold tightly to these truths at least and continue putting one foot in front of the other…living in the tension between knowing what He has shared for certain and not knowing more than that? Could I live like this, trusting myself enough…trusting God enough to know that He is still my God?
Funny enough, TRUST vs. MISTRUST of the world is the first of Erikson’s Psycho Social Crisis. The virtue one obtains from successfully completing this stage is HOPE. I still cannot be for sure if I have mastered this stage…for while this last week has shown me that I have major trust issues with God…I am still such a hopeful person. Deep down, I always have been. In class (Life Skills that is) we talk about how even though our worldly circumstances often mean we don’t successfully complete a stage – God in His divine grace often gives us the virtue of that stage.
Perhaps this is where I fit in. I still have a mistrust of the world, of God, of myself…but that God knew I would still need that virtue of HOPE in order to find my way back into trusting Him.
The other funny enough thing is that it seems my life is still matching up with the sermons of Sanctuary. I figured that they wouldn’t since a decision to move on from Sanctuary a few months ago…but that doesn’t seem to be the case. (Hey- I’ve got to find humor in my life where I can get it.) Any how, being sick yet again today, I had the opportunity to start listening to their latest series “Likewise.” And just as God often does in so many of our lives – whether we acknowledge it or not – here HE was working multiple ways into my conscious mind with the same idea, principle, with the same question my friend posed to me at the beginning of the week:
Two books the friend who posed the question mentioned that “deal with the ecstasy of closeness with God and the deafening silence when He seems to disappear.” More books to add to my list!
God.com & God.net by James Langteaux
Lament – sermon by Kevin Kim that talks about how the man in Psalm 88 was the darkest part of the bible, of the Psalms. There was no apparent hope in this Psalm…except for the fact that this author lamented before God. Also in this sermon is this where I learned about consolation – a feeling of closeness with God…and desolation – a feeling of extreme distance from God. What struck me about these two terms that Kevin talks about it that we, as believers, as followers of Christ – that we don’t control where we are with these two terms. That we can be doing all the right things, doing all the practices of the faith…and yet still be in a place of desolation. To me, this gives me much hope.
