Turning To

I have to wonder how those without God survive.  It’s got to be a hard-scrabble life, even when it looks like you’re successful and on top of the world.  For me, the truth is that what goes up usually ends up coming down.  What will you do when being on the top isn’t enough, or when your top-of-the-world life crashes and you’re left destitute and alone?  These days foreclosures abound, people in need are everywhere, jobs are scarce, and even getting food for your family is a struggle.

It seems that some folks never notice God’s around. Maybe they’re too busy getting to the top.  Maybe they’ve decided he never existed anyway.  Hard to believe in this age of technology people have not heard of him; the Internet waves are everywhere.  Yet, there are those who are hungry for the presence of God but don’t seem to know how to find it. So many are hungry but don’t want to pay the price.  So many think to pay the price means they’ll get no relief.  Where did people get that idea?  Probably from those of us who claim to be Christians but aren’t exactly living according to the calling.

Once I thought I could both hide my Christianity and display it at the same time.  I thought I could be a good person and everyone would know I was a Christian, but I could pretend it didn’t matter if I displayed a temperament God would certainly never have approved of.  It’s like going to church on Sunday and thinking that ought to cover you for all the sinful things you do over the next week.  Trouble is, it doesn’t work.  People always know whether what you have from God is real – or not.

Is your love for God real?  The question haunted me until I spent some time with God praying about it.  You have to be careful answering that question because God knows the truth, even if you won’t admit it.  I didn’t want to say my love for God was real if I didn’t really mean it.  Yes, my love for God is real, though sometimes, in my humanness, I don’t much act like it.  Under stress I sometimes break down and go the wrong way.  I hope I have enough strength of character to admit I am wrong, go back, and right the situation before it’s too late.

Too late.  Those words ought to scare us half to death.  Why do we wait to come to the Lord?  Some people I know think they’re immortal, invincible, and indestructible.  They truly believe they have the rest of their lives to get things done – which means they’ll be 102 before they get around to getting things done, maybe.  There’s still time.

Even when faced with the untimely death of someone their age, they believe they will escape unharmed.   After all, it wasn’t them, it was someone else.  They are still protected by their immortality and belief that it simply isn’t going to happen to them. When that something does happen, they are shocked.  How could this be?

God says our lives are like a vapor, here one second, gone the next.  I’ve seen proof of that recently.  While I was going through radiation, chemo therapy, and surgery several people I knew through work or family died.  My general medical practitioner died in her sleep one weekend; she didn’t have cancer.  Two co-workers died unexpectedly; neither had cancer.  So why was I still around?  I had cancer, wasn’t I supposed to be dead or dying?  Why were they taken and I left?  Only God knows the times of our lives, and he’s the only one who can tell us the whys of it all. God must have something left for me to do.  In Psalm 91:14-16 he says:

“Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges My name.  He will call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.  With long life will I satisfy him and show him My salvation.”

I’d like my vapor, such as it is, to mean something to God’s Kingdom.  God says he will show me his salvation.  I want to see it.  Sometimes I have trouble patiently waiting for him to show me what he needs me to do.  That’s when I rush ahead and end up doing exactly the wrong thing. Too many times I think I’m slow picking up on what he wants me to do.   I don’t realize I was supposed to have done something until I hear him weeping.

Now, that’s a shameful thing, to realize you’ve grieved the Father.  And all because I failed to listen closely or went haring off chasing rabbits when I should have been looking for the King.  How much time have I wasted doing the wrong things or doing nothing at all?  I’m not sure I want to know. I probably rank right up there with the boy who cried wolf one too many times.

How long do I have before it’s forever too late?  I don’t know.  I do know that I can no longer pretend I have a lifetime to do something for God’s Kingdom.  I may not have the next second, or I may have 30 more years.  Only God knows.  The time to be doing things for the Kingdom is now.  There is no later.  There never was.