Kiwi On The Loose

I cannot deny that the summer is slowly fading and the season is changing. I feel it in the air in the evening, and in the mornings……that nostalgic air with a nip sensation on your skin. The evenings are getting darker sooner, and the leaves are starting to think about leaving the tree.
BUT summer is still hanging on and I cannot deny that I am seriously happy!
There can be a lot of guilt attached to happiness sometimes. What right have I got to be seriously happy when others are suffering on a personal level, a national level like Haiti and Chile and the gazillions of other tragedies that never make the headlines, and on a global level the world is descending further into need and liberal insanity. Happy? Why?
I have friends who have no reason to smile because of circumstances in their lives.
How can I be happy when they are in pain?
Where’s the justice and fairness in thinking God has anything to do with my happiness or that He is even interested, when he has all this pain and suffering to work on, grieve and care about?

I was driving somewhere last week and I realised something that was going to be important to me. I was talking to God about something that was important to me as I was driving and in a split second thought thru all the above questions and it came to me  that I had fallen into a trap. I decided to not fall into the lies of that trap anymore, and that because I had fallen into that trap I had limited so many things about my Heavenly Father or Papa as I like to call Him after reading ‘The Shack’.

I saw in a split second as I was apologising to God for asking something so trite and selfish in comparison to what he must have on His mind that I had let the voices of doubt, fear, rationality, the media, unanswered questions, the problem of pain, humanism and unbelief shape and define who God really was. I had let my thinking shape and define God, not Him define who He really was. And in that moment I felt such a loss, and such a fool for trying to be so wise. I do so try to be the good kind of wise and in moments like this you just get sick of yourself…trying.

In reducing my expectation to having a God who would not be interested in my pithy and pathetic needs, I had reduced Him to a level of being human in character and capacity rather than God. In thinking that He must find it difficult dealing with the Haiti situation one second, and my assault on the doors of heaven with my pin head needs and desires, I had reduced Him to being human like me.

The mystery about God is that yes he can identify with human needs, life, frustrations, anger, pains and all the good bits as well as be not limited by that human condition. He became a human in Christ to communicate and identify with us.

But the picture of Him is much wider. Massively different. Can I create stars, cell, atoms………..errrrr no!

So why do I reduce Him to not being able to cope or be interested with my wee needs and be all apologetic for asking, believing He has bigger fish to fry.
Part of the answer is that I have let guilt and the problem of pain wear me down and shape my concept of God and the importance of my needs to Him. You do not have because you do not ask and you ask for your own desires………………hmmmmmmmm.

I have bought into the thinking that God is interested in my character development and not happiness. Character and happiness go hand in hand……….character development does not always have to mean trials, tho that is the path of it at times.

Joy is a deep thing that you can have in the midst of any circumstances.
I am going to believe God is interested and cares about my circumstances, and that he enjoys me chatting to Him about them and asking things of Him, like any child would their father.
He’s much bigger than me…………..

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