Cocooning

I've been reading Philip Yancey's Disappointment with God. I stumbled across the title on another one of my weekly treks through the library's religious section. Yancey is one of my favorite authors, and this book is a Christian classic. Even though it's been around for years I've never read it. It's finally time to give it a go. You can guess why. . .

My relationship with God has been morphing over the last six years. New questions about suffering, and God's role in it, perplex and pain me. Disappointment with God is the first book I've read that "hits the spot." Reading it feels like meeting a doctor who--after years and years of searching--can finally diagnose your debilitating distress. He reaches for your heart and says, "Does it hurt here?" And immediately you know that he has experience in these matters! Finally someone "gets it!" The long string of physicians (authors, pastors, people) that I've visited before all wave away this pain as a problem of the mind: "It's one of the great questions of life that will never be answered or understood, so just dismiss it and move on." But Yancey is willing to go there. He takes a new approach.

Avoiding theological answers to an emotional question is the first thing he gets right. Yancey says, "Disappointment is a hoped-for relationship that somehow has not worked out." (p. 10) And so his book's angle explores relationship. He wonders if those who experience disappointment in God (including himself) have been expecting something from God that is unbiblical or unrealisitic. And so before addressing the problem in his book, he holes up in a small mountain-cabin and digs into the bible--starting at the beginning and working his way through to the New Testament--trying to discover for himself what one can rightfully expect from God. He says, "What better place to begin than by letting God speak for himself? I tried to rid myself of preconceptions and read the Bible like a story, with a 'plot.' What I found there astonished me. It was very different from the story I had been told most of my life."

It astonished me, too. I didn't expect to find real comfort in this book, but I did. One of the key things I walked away with is an understanding of how God's role in humanity--from Old Testament times until now--has changed. There used to be more obvious and frequent miracles, and the voice of God seemed to be heard in an audible way. It bounced out of bushes, and boomed down from burning pillars of fire, and burst out of radiant clouds. But, now, we don't see or hear God in the same way. This change, I learned, is by intention, by design. Now, God takes up residence in US. WE are the body of Christ. Yancey says, when somebody cries, "'Where is God? Show Me. I want to see him.' Surely at least part of the answer to his question is this: If you want to see God, then look at the people who belong to him--they are the "bodies." They are the body of Christ."

Yancey suggests (and this isn't the whole angle of his book, but just one interesting point along the way) that often times our disappointments with God are truly disappointments with his people. There are so many times I have wondered about this very thing for myself. . . If the reason I fall quickly into despair is because I know God works through people and so I am looking to people to help, and I know all too well that when it comes to the amount of money we're in need of . . .help is not going to come. Money has such a fierce hold on all of us (each in different ways--some of us are tied up with debts, some of us don't want to give up our personal dreams for life/retirement, and most of us prize comfort). And so I'm cynical, disbelieving that God CAN save and work in spite of our many strongholds.

BUT: Praise God for two redeeming shifts in my perspective! I'm realizing now that I need to refocus on GOD as my Great Giver--not people. (Phew! What a relief!) And also, I feel a new sense of responsibility to BE the face of God for other hurting souls. Not that I ever stopped caring, or reaching out, but I feel a new surge of enthusiasm. . .like a great gust of wind beneath my weary wings.

This Friday I am speaking to a group of women at my church, and in many ways speaking has become a sort of draining obligation to me. In fact, because of this feeling, after several years of ministering to women's groups, I swore that this event would be my LAST. And though I'm nervous about presenting myself and my stories to women in my home church in particular, I suddenly have new energy to do it. These precious women need words of encouragement from the Lord. I am humbled and surprisingly happy to let God speak, through whatever words he may give me. I am actually excited to "meet" God there, in a very real way.

Who needs a parting of the Red Sea when I can walk with women who are the very face of God to me?

I guess it's possible that my dis-appointment is slowly turning into an appointment! Please Lord, may it be!