Lent Reflection, Day 22, March 25

Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:7-9

I’ve been reading a great book by Donald Miller called, Searching for God Knows What. Many of the following thoughts were brought out through reading this book…

I’ve believed for many years that the most important thing for a person to have is a relationship with God, but as I look at the way I’m living this belief out, I can see that I’m not really practicing what I think is the most important thing with God or those closest to me.

A relationship is not easy, they never come with an instruction manual, and at times a certain thing that you do to cultivate a relationship works in one situation, but makes things hairy in another. A good relationship is unconditional. I want that kind of acceptance, but yet I’m reluctant to give it. One thing that’s hard in relationships is that every person I’ve ever known is different than me. They have different problems, they don’t always laugh at my jokes, I don’t always laugh at theirs, they have different opinions about everything over and under the sun, and they want me to alter my schedule to do things I don’t exactly care about. It’s like they don’t have the decency to be ME! I guess that’s what’s hard about a relationship with God. For God to be God he has to be different than me, me and everyone else for that matter, but a big problem I have, I guess since I can’t see him or something, is that I have the uncanny ability to turn him into a glorified alter-ego of myself instead of seeing him for who he really is. And as I write this it makes me kind of cringe to think about what a god like me would be like.

One of my greatest surprises has been that my wife is not like me. Back in our early dating days we seemed to have a lot more in common. Almost six years after walking down the aisle, I truly believe that I married an alien. She looks like a human, but just like Mork she must be from Ork. This discovery has been shocking and is still even frightening at times, but I’ve come to find out that in so many ways things were better on the planet she grew up on, and if you were to ask her, I’m pretty sure she would say the same about me. It’s pretty much the same way with God. If you are searching for God, realize that when you find him, he won’t exactly be who you expect him to be. In many ways he’ll exceed your expectations, he won’t let you down like most of the people you’ve known, and in other ways certain things about God will be hard to accept and understand. And I guess this should be expected. Shouldn’t our creator’s ways be higher than our ways, and his thought’s higher than our thoughts? If another person isn’t always predictable why would God be predictable? Don’t get me wrong God is constant and consistent, but the way he relates to us cannot be reduced to a formula or method. This thought might seem overwhelming at first, but in reality it is one of the first steps to knowing and even understanding God. We will never totally understand him, but this mystery is what makes him worthy of our awe and wonder.

Prayer: Ask God to help you see him for who he really is and not who you want him to be.