On A Shelf You Can Hardly Reach

I just laid down to go sleep, and I laid there and it only took me about 2 seconds to realize I’d just gone my entire day, and was about to end it, with out speaking to God once. Without recognizing Him even in the slightest! And I kind of laughed at myself because it’s been almost every day lately that has been like this. This is my prime example of how I too often use these temporary crutches to get me through my days, even if they’re not bad. Then, what happens is, we set God aside. You and I, we set Him high up on a shelf we can hardly reach, along with old papers we’ve been looking for for months and over due library books. Where He sits and waits as we carry on and temporarily forget about Him. But we tend to stray down this ignorant, repetitive path only when we are feeling fine and peachy. Then comes a bad day and we suddenly need Him. Next thing we know, quicker than we ever thought we could, we desperately run to that shelf once again, like we do so often. We stand on our tippy-toes, grunt with our whole bodies stretched out tall, reaching desperately for that Jesus we didn’t intentionally mean to neglect, but nevertheless, walked by every day without giving him even the shyest glance. We grab Him, quickly dust Him off and cry, “WHY AREN’T YOU WORKING FOR ME RIGHT NOW?! I DON’T DESERVE THIS! WHY AREN’T YOU HELPING ME AND COMFORTING ME LIKE YOU PROMISED? WHY AREN’T YOU COMING THROUGH FOR ME?”

(On a side note: Not to confuse you, I do not believe that everything “bad” that happens in our lives is because we weren’t focused on God. I believe even some of the most tragic, frightful and horrendous of experiences will happen even as we walk blamelessly in His footsteps. But if I were to start talking about this it would divert the point I’m trying to make…so I’ll leave that at that and carry on.)

I don’t think that God demands from us a certain amount of time everyday. I think what He truly wants, is a heart to strive after Him deeply…as He longs for us. He cares for us and loves us more than we can even fathom, we truly could not ever understand in our earthly bodies how He loves. It’s nothing we ourselves know or can wrap our minds around. But He does know that when we are walking closely with Him, with our hearts open pouring into His and allowing His to pour into our own, that is when our greatest strength comes and our deepest knowledge and our truest love. I don’t think it makes life easier, because it doesn’t put a wall up against temptations or hardships or tragedies from happening, they will still all continue to be apart of our lives. But I believe, in the midst of anything, when we are ready to allow Him, and only then, He will grow us. He will open our hearts and our minds to thing’s we’ve never seen or known before, He will bless us far beyond earthly desires even, far beyond what we could sum up in our minds.

But when we set God aside, we ARE distancing ourselves from Him. Even though, I believe a lot of the time it’s unintentional. But when the distance begins to creep in…we start to depend on ourselves more and more and on Him less and less. We become more. And He becomes less.

I want to end on a little piece of something I wrote earlier this year; I think it could apply nicely.

“Help me to trust You, God. I want more than anything to have the ceaseless faith that they speak of. The faith to cast the mountains into the sea. I want that more than anything but I don't believe it's easy to maintain. I feel some days, despite my hearts contrary desire, that I cannot find my own faith. And some days I can't find where it's not. But I want to strengthen the weakest doubts of my heart into firm confidence that You WILL.

Some say it doesn't matter if we believe or not, because at the end of the day, You are God and whether we truly are sure of that or not does not even begin to shake the truth of the matter, being, You are. But You have told us, through your word, that we must have faith other wise You will not deliver, that if we ask with complete confidence and truly believe that You will permit our pleas, then You will. But how does one convince oneself of a promise that big? No matter the struggle of desire. How do we begin to be fully convinced of something that massive and great? What are we to hold onto?

I think to this...

That He is large. He is the creator. We do not even understand the completeness of the exact definition of "large" as we define our Creator, the truth cannot be contained in one earthly word, He is not earthly Himself. Hence, to describe Him exactly with words only we, ourselves can muster, would fall disappointingly behind measure. He has created the galaxies themselves. And stars and moon and day in after day out, continually keeps the earth spinning on its precise axis. WHILE ALSO, seeing to each and every one of us with His utter and full attention. He is completely captivated by EACH one of us and longs for us all deeply...yet, we do not depend on Him to follow through for us. As much as He loves us, and as much as we claim to love Him, we STILL cannot trust Him enough to deliver. As much as He has done, is doing, and has yet to do, we still do not trust that He has is under control. We think we can probably do it better. It's a bride on her wedding day that refuses to put her trust in the best man with the rings. Instead she keeps them safely with her because she KNOWS that as long as she's in control of them, she doesn't have to worry about being completely unsatisfied and disheartened if on the altar the best man ends up forgetting them. Our flawed minds truly believe that we, mere human beings, could outsmart our creator. It truly is humorous.

You bring up the moon every single night since the beginning of time and speak the sun into place each morning, that is how constant Your love is. That is a perfect example of exactly how reliable and dependable You are...and still...we hesitate to give you our burdens and our problems. You're not loud and in our faces, You're a soft voice. A gentle whisper. And we tend to be too distracted by everything that can grab our attention with it's noise. We truly are prone to wander.”

I am so flawed. Still You’ll wait patiently, and you have yet to fail at doing so…