MacCallum

When I look closely at my life I am often tempted to ask God “why?”

Why do I have such excellent health?

Why am I still employed?

Why do my children and I have such good communication?

Why am I happily married?

Why have I never gotten a speeding ticket?

Have you seen what’s in my heart Lord? Why are you even still living there? It must be too small and dark a place for someone like you. I even tried to take credit for my blessings as if I could bring them about on my own. I’m not even cooperating with you half the time! Doesn’t that irritate you? Don’t you think you could have picked someone more deserving than me to pour all this out on?

I am not sure why you keep blessing me, Lord.

What have I done to deserve all this?

I quit flipping open the Bible to find God’s will because I found He was only speaking from middle of the book, on the right hand pages.

When you’re a kid, God is God, and that’s enough.

As a teenager, it’s all about feeling God’s presence and love.

In your twenties, it’s about what you can do for God.

In your thirties, it’s about what God can do for you.

In your forties, God disappears so you can rethink everything you thought you knew about him.

In your fifties, it’s about focusing on what’s really important since you don’t have much time left.

In your sixties, it’s about telling everyone what you’ve learned about God, the world and other things.

In your seventies, it’s about becoming comfortable with the idea of meeting God face to face.

In your eighties, it’s about becoming impatient with meeting God face to face.

In your nineties and beyond, God is God and that’s enough.

My thoughts are a mess most of the time, like a liquid waiting to be poured into a mold. The mold is my words. We don’t really form our thoughts fully until we open our mouths to speak them, or write them. In fact, try to image everything that you would want say before you speak. You can’t do it, because thoughts only take shape as they are combined with words. It’s a mystical meeting designed by God.

Though God isn’t bound by our limitations in this respect, interestingly He chose to use words to complete His work. In Genesis, clearly God knew His own mind, but no action took place until he spoke. Then creature occurs. Jesus is the “Word of God” not only because He is the vehicle of communication, but because he is the embodiment of God’s most perfect action. He was in that sense “spoken” into human form and human history – “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. When Jesus speaks people are healed, the dead are raised and demons flee.

Likewise, we are condemned or acquitted by every careless word since each word is an action. From the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks and thus gives form to the formless thoughts inside us. We are saved when we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord, (Romans 10).

This works in our favor. In the praises of God spoken aloud there is power that does not exist when they are kept inside. Once they are spoken, they exist in the objective sense that they moved the air about us, entered our own ears and the ears of others, and rose to heaven as a testament. While we keep our thoughts inside, God still sees, but only he can discern their meanings. Once we speak, then we, and others, can too. It makes a difference when we speak our praises, and sing to one another in hymns, psalms and spiritual songs since the enemy, and the angels, can no more read our thoughts than men.

Words, spoken or written, give life to the raw materials of thought swirling about inside, bounced back and forth by feelings and circumstances; interrupted, forgotten, fleeting or profound.

I “lose” my temper in a moment and later berate myself for my lack of self-control; but the lack of self-control was watching TV the night before, ignoring a habit of meaningful prayer and gulping five minutes of morning Bible reading and thinking, “I’m covered for today!”  This is where I “lost” my temper…in the quiet opportunities to store up good in my heart so the overflow would be good.

And speaking of overflow… people with tempers (like me) should just forget the whole “venting” argument. When I lose my temper I am not venting anything. I am not “letting off steam,” I am training myself to explode more quickly the next time. I am reinforcing my anger while excusing it, and feeling justified about it all at the same time. It’s healthy, we tell ourselves. I know different. I know that indulging in a bad habit only entrenches that habit.

So now I have to “find” my temper before I “lose” it, and that means God and I need more time together. Then if I feel things boiling up for any reason, at least He will have a shot at me before I take a shot at anyone else. Or the dog. Or inanimate objects.

I think that because God is all-powerful and sufficient in Himself, without need or deficit that we forget we can still offer Him something valuable. God may know all things, but He hasn’t done all things. God can have new experiences.

As a father, I know what it means to be with my kids as they learn new things, as they discover things around them and inside themselves. I get great pleasure from those shared experiences though many of the activities in and of themselves were irrelevant to me – it was the time spent with my kid that made it meaningful to me. And it didn’t matter that I had already done many of those activities with one kid when the next one wanted to do it. It was always a new experience since it was shared with someone different.

If you are uniquely made by God, then you alone can offer God the experience of your company. And as a father myself, I know He’s looking forward to it.

Sometimes we are encouraged to not let our religious habits “get in the way” of true spirituality, when in fact most of us could use a few habits to better spiritual effect. Occasionally religious habits have even been accused of leading to a “spiritual rut”.  All good habits are servants and should only be abandoned when a more effective servant appears. Otherwise why not lean upon it?

Forsaking a religious habit (like rising early to read Scripture, praying at a set time, tithing a predetermined amount) usually comes at a time of frustration rather than growth – when we no longer feel the effect of the habit. But this is an over-reaction. Rather we should seek stability instead of feeling, edification rather than excitement. As we are the most inconstant of all God’s creatures, swaying toward God one hour and then away from Him the next, we should be happy to have any habit that brings us more consistency. Even if that habit risks becoming mere routine later, activities that reinforce the thoughts of God, activities that hammer into us those shiny nails of truth that He hands us, are the very servants of the God who gave them.

I don’t think there is life on other planets. I read the Scriptures to say life on earth is the central stage for the story of God – His love and redemption of His highest creation, Man, through His Son. I know the rebuttal is something like, that’s pretty arrogant, to think Man is the center of this vast universe. I don’t think Man is the center, that’s humanism. I think Christ is the center. And why would God pick this insignificant speck called Earth out of such a vast universe? As opposed to a more significant spec? Like there’s any planet that isn’t a speck in the “vast” expanse of the universe? And if God picked it, doesn’t that mean it is no longer insignificant?

So the “vast” argument does not work for me. The “vast” argument for life on other planets goes like this: the universe is so VAST that statistically, there could be billions upon billions of earthlike planets where life could have started like it did here: meaning by accident in a primordial soup that was cooking after the Big Bang. The “vast” argument relies heavily on the common inability to comprehend the size of anything in the billions. Like the U.S. budget deficit. Most people just can’t wrap their head around it so the “vast” argument seems plausible.

The truth is, the vastness of the universe argues better for the existence of God, than for the existence of other life forms. It displays His infinite nature, which was satisfied for thousands of years with simpler metaphors – mountains, sand on the shore, the ocean, the stars – placed all around so we could “see” an example of the infinite. And as Man “outgrew” these, more was waiting. God graciously gives us a universe that is so nearly infinite that we will never be without something to ponder how vast HE is.

God’s first title, as it were, is Creator. With His words “Let there be…” the Creative Process was begun and has not stopped resonating through time and history. The vibration of His voice flows through us all and whether we rightly give credit to God the Creator or misname the sensation that flows through us – Taoism’s Way, Hinduism’s Karma, Buddhism’s Path – it is felt.

It may be mislabeled, but then many feelings can be. Nonetheless it’s a testimony God has left with all mankind at all times. We experience being “created in His image” when we participate in any creative process. It is the most basic opportunity God offers, and like the rain, it is given to the righteous and the unrighteous, the foolish and the wise, the grateful and the ungrateful.

Every true thought that God reveals is like a shiny nail with a sharp point.  It has weight and substance and the ability to go deep into the structure of our lives. But what is required is the hammer of our habit to tap and drive it home. It is no use having a box of nails with no hammer; without a hammer, nails are well-crafted but utterly useless objects. We are responsible to pick up the hammer of good habits and make God-given thoughts a permanent part of our lives.

Our thinking is not strong enough on its own to move us toward God consistently. It takes habit to make truth last. We must support every thought God reveals to us by use of positive habits since it would be pointless for God to reveal the thought over and over because we failed to incorporate it.

So when you hear from God, take up the hammer of habit and begin tapping that thought into the place He meant for it to go. If you use the first nail He gives you, He might give you a second one.