Spelling Practice

Some of my favorite people to be around are those with wrinkled shirts and tousled hair, who have lost sleep in their own nights of wrestling with a God who didn’t fit their box, who admit to being confounded by He who tugs at their heart and yet cannot be contained in it.  They have been willing to draw close to Him in spite of the fact that instead of answering the question they asked, He tends to pose a different one (the one that really matters), and instead of making them endlessly comfortable, helps them to find comfort in being stretched. 

These courageous, humble, and seemingly (at least sometimes) crazy people have come to accept, even to love a God whose edges they cannot reach, and are learning to let go of the handles of the satchel they had tried to squeeze Him into and carry.  Until we grapple with the differences between us--size,  importance, and perspective all being high on the list--we may have simply fooled ourselves into thinking we have a superhero buddy who will happily wag a tail and bring us our slippers when we whistle.  “Come here, boy” is no way to address the Creator of the universe.  We sometimes act like He should be grateful that we’ve thrown Him a prayer to fetch, indicated by the way we just fling requests into the heavens without pausing to be amazed at the power of whom we ask.

We all risk trying to wrap a resurrected God back into swaddling clothes.  Fascinating to me are those rare individuals who are trying to meet God on His own terms.   Let’s work on getting the letters in the right order.  It's G-O-D, not D-O-G.