Hard to Get

I want to start by asking your forgiveness tonight. I am angry, I probably shouldn’t write tonight but I need to let this out. I am angry but probably not at the thing you would think – I’ll get to that in a minute. I am also perplexed. I don’t understand God. Now before you try to console me with all your wisdom about God don’t forget Job’s three friends were firmly convinced in their view of God. They were proved to be wrong. So please hold your tongue for a minute and let me vent. I don’t understand God and I am not alone. Job did not understand God. Habakkuk cried out from his watchtower because he just did not understand what God was doing. God is hard to get and he plays hard to get. Look at all the religions of the world out there, a grasping to understand God and make God what they want him to be. It is so complicated that most of them had to split him into multiple personalities (gods). The truth is we would all be completely lost in our understanding of God if he had not provided some level of detail about Himself to us. He did it in two forms. The word of God (the Bible) and God in human flesh – Christ Jesus, for the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Even with that level of knowledge that we have been privileged with by God, God is still sometimes just plain hard to get. You may doubt what I am saying but you do not have to live in my house and listen to my wife wailing in the bathroom trying to keep the rest of us from hearing her mourning. There is a part of grief that I can try and try to explain away with the deepest of theological discourse but it does not take away the pain and the knowledge that God was more than strong enough to keep Isabella from passing on so early. We were robbed of so much. Yes, I know we were given so much. We had much joy in preparing a place for Isabella as I know God has had as much joy in doing the same. But that doesn’t take away the emptiness in my heart that is my daughter and her quick departure from me. God is not easy to understand. I am not convinced he means to be. I am not convinced an eternity with Him will bring an end to my amazement at how complex he is.

I have said my peace. I know God is sufficient and I know God does not have to give me anything or any answer. I also know that God loves me and I truly believe God grieves with me because this is not how the world was meant to be. We live in one messed up crazy world and truth be told, it is messed up because we made it that way. God did not force us to sin against him; in fact, Satan did not force us to rebel against God. We chose to rebel and we do it everyday as a race. Earlier I said I was angry. I’m not angry at God, I don’t get Him, but I’m not angry, at least not this second! I’m not angry at my wife, I’m not angry at our delivery. I am angry at sin. I am angry that my sin (in general) has caused such a divide that God is so hard for me to get. I long for those days when I can walk in the garden with God like Adam and Eve did and to experience that level of relationship that they experienced before they rebelled. I long for an intimacy that will help me find God less hard to get.

I end tonight with a song Rich Mullins wrote. It fits my mood perfectly. Rich was a man of God that I could only dream of being. He had a true gift for writing music. He had realness and openness in his lyrics that I think is only second to King David’s honesty. I want to be real like David and Rich with God. God knows my thoughts. I want to be open like this yet to remain like Job. To question, to cry out and to wait for the answers that may never come, but all the while to remain faithful to God and not curse Him. He is good and His love endures forever.

Rich Mullins – Hard to Get

You who live in heaven
Hear the prayers of those of us who live on earth
Who are afraid of being left by those we love
And who get hardened by the hurt
Do you remember when You lived down here where we all scrape
To find the faith to ask for daily bread
Did You forget about us after You had flown away
Well I memorized every word You said
Still I'm so scared, I'm holding my breath
While You're up there just playing hard to get
You who live in radiance
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in skin
We have a love that's not as patient as Yours was
Still we do love now and then
Did You ever know loneliness
Did You ever know need
Do You remember just how long a night can get?
When You were barely holding on
And Your friends fall asleep
And don't see the blood that's running in Your sweat
Will those who mourn be left uncomforted
While You're up there just playing hard to get?
And I know you bore our sorrows
And I know you feel our pain
And I know it would not hurt any less
Even if it could be explained
And I know that I am only lashing out
At the One who loves me most
And after I figured this, somehow
All I really need to know
Is if You who live in eternity
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in time
We can't see what's ahead
And we can not get free of what we've left behind
I'm reeling from these voices that keep screaming in my ears
All the words of shame and doubt, blame and regret
I can't see how You're leading me unless You've led me here
Where I'm lost enough to let myself be led
And so You've been here all along I guess
It's just Your ways and You are just plain hard to get