Sometimes I wish you lived next door

So I could stroll into your apartment

And ask you what you started all these for

Over a cup of coffee.

I guess you saw that sunrise yesterday

Thanks for the reminder

That you’re never gone away”.

Battle God all you want, he always wins. So Instead of you fighting God because of your challenges, why not ask him to fight for you? It is only God I know who fights our battles and gives us credit for the victory. David knew this. He decided not to see Goliath as a threat. He had no trust in his sling and came through with the name of Lord, which of course is a strong tower. That is the safest harbor for the righteous in difficult times, not the night club or the bar like many think.

It was Malcolm Gladwell who spoke in one of his talks about the shortcomings of giants and the sight challenge that Goliath encountered. He did not see a big giant, he saw a fallible and vulnerable tall man.

We have these encounters with God where he breaks into our lives with power and answers our prayers and wins our trusts and he waters the gardens of our faith, making it lush and green. And then there are these seasons when chaos hurtles with utter carelessness through our lives and the world, leaving us shattered and broken. Sometimes, an unrelenting darkness descends. Other times, an arid wind we don’t even understand blows our spiritual landscape, leaving the crust of our souls cracked and parched. And we cry to God in our perplexed anguish and he just seems silent. He seems absent.

King David said “…why are you so far from my groaning? I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest”. Why is God silent? Could he be standing in the heavens and just playing hard to get? But then this questions helped me;

Why is water so much more refreshing when we are really thirsty?

Why is it that in the real world, absence makes the heart grow fonder but familiarity breeds contempt?

Why can the thought of being denied for marriage or children or visa or admission or freedom or some other dream create in us a desperation we previously didn’t have?

See? There is a pattern in the design of deprivation: deprivation draws out desire. Absence heightens desire; and the more heightened the desire, the greater it’s satisfaction will be; just like a bottle of chilled water satisfy you after a long trek from Admiralty to C.M.S.

Imagine what would happen if bad things never happened to ‘good’ people. What if when an airline crashes, only the non-Christians die while the entire believers emerge from their ordeal unscathed? What if the moment someone becomes an atheist, he is immediately struck by lightning and thunder. What if every rape, murder, robbery, and painful illness only happened to non-believers? If that were the case, then no faith would be required to be a Christian. Faith is the cornerstone of Christianity.

If we are honest, we have to admit that there are many things we do not understand about God. Those who try to shed light on God’s mysteries are probably living in some high degree delusion. There are areas in our Christian faith that lie beyond the keenest scholarship or even the most profound spiritual exercises.

For many people, these problems raise so many questions and uncertainties that faith itself becomes a struggle, and the very person and character of God are called into question. Chris Wright encourages us in his book, ‘The God I Don’t Understand’ to face up to the limitations of our understanding and to acknowledge the pain and grief they can often cause.

I was in my early teens when the first “dazing why” came rocketing my brain. I knew I had hit an issue that required more horsepower than I processed. In your voyage to figure out the almighty, do not depend heavily on your ability to make the pieces fit.

Human perception sometimes poses questions the mind is incapable of answering. Not only is human perception a highly flawed and imprecise instrument, but our emotions are less reliable. If perceptions of emotions are victims at best, then we must be extremely objective in accepting what they tell us about God.

Unfortunately for many believers, they seem unaware of this source of confusion and disillusionment. It is typical for vulnerable people to accept what they “feel” about God when they face trials. But what they feel may reflect nothing more than a momentary frame of mind.

Never assume God’s silence or apparent inactivity is an evidence of his disinterest. His words are infinitely more dependable than our strange emotions. With God, when nothing seems to be happening — something is happening, even when our prayers seem to echo back from a void universe.