Friday, September 16, 2011

We Need God

So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and in his good time he will honor you. Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about what happens to you.

-- 1 Peter 5:6-7

Wow. This just sounds so easy. Like passing a glass of sweet tea to a friend. “Here you go. You drink this. I don‘t like it. I don‘t know what to do with it. So I‘m giving it to you. You deal with it.”

I keep thinking that one day I’ll uncover a secret ingredient that makes this whole step easier. The only problem is that I don’t think it exists. The “secret” isn’t a secret. The ingredient is trust. And life has taught me that trust isn’t a dependable thing.

But God is trustworthy. He is honest. He loves me, though sometimes I can’t imagine why. He wants good things for me. I could go on and on. I know all this in my head. I do. But it’s that heart of mine that has been broken by life so many times that really messes with that whole trust thing.

I have a running dialogue in my mind for any given scenario. Well, the bad ones anyway. I’ve learned to expect the worst and that’s a really bad place to be. I don’t want to chose that path again. I don’t want to believe those lies one more time. I want to believe God. I want to trust His vision of who I am and who I can be.

I look around and I see so many worries everywhere. I know I am not alone. I see the unemployed mother working in a backyard garden trying to grow food. I see the elderly woman living alone in an apartment in a dangerous area of town because it’s all she can afford. I see a couple longing for a child they can’t have. I see marriages breaking apart, children falling behind, and a world that is lost and flailing.

And then I remember His offer. Give Him our worries. Follow His light. Find answers and peace. All we have to do it admit what we already know: We don’t have the answers and we aren’t likely to. We need help. We need guidance. We need God