Look Up

So often in life, especially when circumstances are difficult or leave you feeling as if the future is unknown, we find our focus becomes fixated on the predicament we find ourselves in rather than the One who is with us.  This propensity can lead us to a lack of contentment, anxiousness and a loss of hope. 

Because we are so focused on the circumstance, we believe the answer is to somehow try and fix or control the situation.  If we are unsuccessful in this endeavor, this may lead to despair.  If we are able to manage this level of control over our situation, it may eliminate the pain and pressure of the circumstance, but it may also lead us to put our hope is something far smaller than the God of the universe.  This in turn will lead us to live in a very small story, in which we are always susceptible to being blown about by the winds of our changing circumstances.

This is not the life we were designed to live.

Given this reality, I have been spending time contemplating the character and nature of God.  It seems the only appropriate response to the circumstances in which I find myself.  I do not know if you have ever been lost in the woods, without a GPS, map, or clearly marked trail.  When this happens, after the initial anxiousness subsides, the thing to do is to look up and try to find yourself a landmark which you recognize that can guide you out of our state of lostness and back to a place where you can rest in the comfort of knowing exactly where you are. 

When there are no landmarks, you turn your attention to the Sun, or the Moon if it is night, and because you know the consistency with which they make their way through the heavens, they help you to gain your bearings and guide you back to a place of foundness.  When the wilderness is your life, focusing on the character and nature of God, because we know the consistency of who He is, provides the same kind of help..

Focusing on these things has put me in a place of contemplating God's vastness.  He is so vast; there is not a place where He is not.  I cannot find myself so lost that He is not there.  I have pondered God’s infinitude.  There are no boundaries to His existence, knowledge and power.  I cannot find myself in a situation which He is unaware of, lacks the power to intervene in, or which will last beyond His ability to intercede. 

I can go on and on.  I could talk about His goodness, justice, mercy and grace, all of which know no bounds.  I could speak of His holiness, perfection, and trustworthiness, which ought to engender hope and belief.  There is, however, something else which I have been thinking about that has helped me see another aspect of God that gives me an entirely different view of why He is worth looking to in this season.  While reading 1 Timothy this morning I was struck by God’s willingness to allow His own desires to go without being completely fulfilled. 

As the Apostle Paul is urging his reader to pray for all men he says, “This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”  Here is what is at the core of the heart of God.  It is born out of love.  It has motivated Him to humble himself and become a man.  It caused the Father to sacrifice the son.  It caused the Son to be willing to submit to the will of the Father.  It is the desire the Holy Spirit works to bring about.  Because this desire is so close to the heart of God, our lostness becomes the conflict to be resolved in the grand story of God.  Every plot-line which is introduced and developed is leading toward the climax of this desired fulfillment.

While I am in no position to judge, on the surface it seems to me from what I can observe, not “all men” have or will respond to the loving pursuit of God.  How hard it must be for Him, to know the way of life, and yet to be willing to allow all men to decide for themselves whether they will choose to walk along this path.  How hard it must be because He knows all things, including the fact there is no other hope to be found, to desire such good for all men, only to see that desire remain unfulfilled. 

My temptation if I were God, given the fact I would not only know all good, but am all good, would be to force people into the good, but He does not do this.  He is willing to set aside His desire to allow us to choose to come to this knowledge or not.  This fact must also be good, for He is always good to us.

As I am trying to wrap my head around this goodness and what it means, another thought occurs to me.  What if in the process of experiencing our own unfulfilled desires we are able to discover something of the heart of God.  What if in having something that seems like the ultimate good go unfulfilled we are actually given the experience of what is like to be the Father of the Prodigal Son, always about our work, but also always with one eye focused down the road, hoping for that day he sees the silhouette of his son making his way back home.

In the story, the son returns and there is much rejoicing.  In life, we know the Father’s will is that all would return, but many never make their way back down that road.  In our unfilled desires we catch a glimpse of how the Father’s heart must ache.  Yes, our heart aches but in the pain it also instruct us on just how much love this all knowing, all powerful, ever present God has for us.

This should cause our hearts to look up when we are lost, to take our eyes off of the circumstances of our life and remember the one who waits at the end of the road.  It is in this image which will lead us out of lostness  to the place of being found.  When we come to rest in our foundness we will discover the great joy of knowing all the desires that have been set aside along the way, if fulfilled, could in no way replace the peace, joy and contentment we have come to know.

This is my hope.  It is why in the midst of my present circumstances I choose to look up.

Psalm 121

I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From where shall my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
He will not allow your foot to slip;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, He who keeps Israel
Will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;
The Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun will not smite you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The Lord will protect you from all evil;
He will keep your soul.
The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in
From this time forth and forever.

Psalm 139:7-12

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.

 If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
And the light around me will be night,”
Even the darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You.