Today Im going to have just a teeny weeny moan.
Im a great lover of facebook and the whole digital revolution which allows us to keep in touch with people on the other side of the planet and see what they had for breakfast and watch their children in the school play and all that jazz. But one of the things that irritates me is the endless parade of well meant aphorisms which just dont make any sense or are patently untrue.
Take the three above which I selected randomly from a page of images I searched for as ' encouraging words'
Number one. No obstacle is too great when you choose to be greater than the obstacle. What does that mean? Does that mean that if Im facing cancer I can choose in some way to ' be greater' than cancer and that it is therefore no longer a problem to me???
Number two - seems OK on the surface, except that silver linings can be hard to come by when you are really in the thick of it. And being told by someone to ' stay strong' is easier said than done sometimes. And how exactly are we supposed to ' stay strong' when our world may be crumbling round our ears? It's a ' nice' sentiment..... but does it really do anything much for the reader? Not sure
Number three. The future belongs to anyone who is fortunate enough to wake up tomorrow morning. Im not quite sure what believing in the beauty of ones dreams means exactly - but Im pretty sure that if you dont have any dreams, or if your dreams are prosaic and utilitarian, you still have a future.
Im being cynical and a bit grumpy - but I do worry that increasingly in our twitter-fed world we are reducing life into sound bites and meaningless one-liners. In our age of marketing strap lines and minimal attention spans are we losing the ability to seek for truth, listen patiently and wait for God to speak a meaningful word, meditate on scripture to find the answers? One of the most powerful and life changing moments in my life so far came a few years back when I asked God why He had allowed a particularly awful child murder to happen. ( apologies if you have heard this story before :) ) I was angry and upset and I wasnt going to settle for any of the usual trite answers. I didnt want a poster for my bedroom wall telling me that God works all things together for good, or that into every life a little rain must fall. Or that bad things sometimes happen to good people. I wanted truth. I wanted righteous understanding. I wanted God to justify Himself. I NEEDED an answer which satisfied the deep unease in my soul. If God wasnt able to answer my question then He wasn't who I thought He was. I prayed and harangued and generally was stroppy with Him for days and days and days. Like a dog with a bone I was not going to be satisfied until I got the answer.
And then, one day sitting in the car at traffic lights He spoke to me. And He said ' Caz, I take full responsibility'. BAM! In a moment of total clarity I understood a gazillion things about how He was able to say that and mean it absolutely. He knew everything about every single person involved in that child's life. He knew what the child would have done and been had he lived. He knew the perpetrators and what they would have done had they not been caught and jailed for this horrific crime. He knew that He had already paid the price and taken into himself the sin and the suffering and the horror of the event. He knew that He was in full possession of every fact and that He had taken the decision to allow a child to be murdered for reasons which He would make clear to me should I want to know them. And all of a sudden I didnt need to know the reasons. I just knew that Jesus is able to account for every decision He makes because He makes every decision righteously and has paid the penalty in His own body for every sin. ' I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy'
God only spoke five words that day, but those words changed me. They settled once and for ever the question we all ask which is ' How could a loving God allow.....' I am well aware that those five words might not satisfy you. But you need to ask your own questions and keep on asking, seeking, knocking until you get the answer which brings your soul to peace. In every situation God has a true word to speak. In my experience that word is very rarely in the form of a Facebook gif or a Hallmark card. God is not in the business of instantaneous tick box answers. He wants us to seek after Him and engage in discussion with Him and wrestle with Him. He enjoys the interaction.
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