A quarterly magazine for truth, faith, and logic.
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A quarterly magazine for truth, faith, and logic. |
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Vol. 3, Issue 2 | Spring 2009 |
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The God over Cats and Paychecksby Paul Lytle Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; After reading a biography of George Müller, I really starting praying for my everyday needs more. I was rather inspired by the way Müller would just pray for God to bring him what he needed, in ministry, with his orphanage, or in travel. And it would work. I was, of course, reminded that Jesus told us, “if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” In all honesty, I had prayed like this over certain events before, but I really didn’t have faith that it would work, and it usually didn’t. After reading about Müller, I was a bit more inspired than I had been in the past. It was a neat habit to develop, and I found myself at work, bragging amongst of friends about God’s provision. Not bragging about my faith or some other nonsense, because I had seen God’s hand in it and not my own. It was God that took me sixty miles on an empty gas tank when there wasn’t a gas station nearby. It was God that brought a large check to us suddenly when we prayed to make ends meet. It was God who did it again when I started wondering how we would make it through the summer. He would even show up in the small things. Our cat got out of the apartment about eleven o’clock one night, and my wife and I spent the next two hours looking for him. We were giving up when we stopped at our door to pray for the cat’s return, and he can trotting up to us within a half minute. I tell people about these things because they’re wonderful. They speak so much about God, even when they sometimes tell of my own foolishness for not going to prayer sooner. And yet I’m usually quiet about times of real trial, the times when I pray more fervently than when my cat was lost. There are times when I am just spiritually exhausted. Tonight is one of those times. I came home and put on a Seinfeld DVD while I was eating dinner. I ended up watching four episodes, with bonus features, just to keep everything else away for a little while. Is that a story worth telling at work tomorrow? That I was so down that I watched two hours of Seinfeld? Will that bring people, mouths agape, to the throne of God? I have a feeling that this is how the whole Prosperity Gospel started in the first place. Some Christians had a wonderful experience with God, and they wanted to tell it. And then the same Christians would have a time of intense trial, and they would hold their tongues, because they didn’t want to spoil the image of God they have formed in the minds of others with the happy stories. As though God needed an editor. A lot of people got the wrong idea. They came to churches expecting these awesome blessings. Money, success, everything, right there. That’s what they had heard from us. Tonight, I finally started feeling guilty about just watching DVDs all night, and so I started reading an old Charles Colson book. I read several of the short essays until I came to one he wrote after being hospitalized with cancer. In the hospital, he encountered a Hindu man whose son was being treated there. The Hindu man had heard on television that Christians would be healed of such diseases. Would his son have to suffer such if he were Christian? My coworkers know about my cat. They know about my gas tank. They know about the two checks that just appeared in our lives. Not many of them know about how my wife has lost two family members in five months; how our relationship with other family members are so strained that they make her cry on nearly a daily basis; how her parents are arguing constantly and bringing us into the fight at any opportunity; how many often and long my grandmother has been in the hospital the last few months; about my parents getting a divorce; about her ex-fiancé showing up out of the blue to cause trouble; about medical test results that are probably nothing, and yet could change everything for us; about big projects that frustratingly go nowhere. About standing in the hallway at work, holding the cell phone and listening to her cry, and struggling to not fall apart because she needs me. About praying, praying, praying, even in the middle of meetings or on phone calls with customers. And that’s sort of a shame. We too often see God as the rich guy on top of the hill, where if you go to Him and ask Him very nicely for something and compliment Him, He’ll laugh jovially and give us a check. Sort of like Santa. He shows up once a year, gives you a gift, and then you don’t have to worry about Him again for another year. More often, God is more like the guy who will create a job for the family man who was laid off; who will sit out on the porch with you all night when your wife leaves you; who will yell at you for your mistakes, but still help you fix them; who shakes your hand when you get a promotion, and pats you on the back when you don’t. He’s the one who’s always working to turn bad things into good things. He doesn’t just fix everything, but He uses them. He doesn’t make your life perfect, but brings it, if you’ll trust Him, to a perfect end. He doesn’t give us money, but Grace. When I look back on my life, the most amazing miracles I’ve witnessed are how God moved me when things went bad. It was always when I was at my lowest that He would push me forward, teaching me and drawing me ever closer to Him. It was in despair that I reached out to Him in the beginning, and it is in those moments still that He does His biggest work in me. It is only then that I remember that there are things more important than this life. It is only when faced with pain and death that we remember that we should think of something beyond this life. To answer that Hindu man twenty years late — God may cure your son; He may not. But if your son believes, then God will use it for his good. The people at work know the story about my cat. Not many of them know why the cat ran off. It is because my wife and I were having a ridiculously bad argument that lasted for hours. It was horrible, and it makes me cry just to think of it. The cat got scared and made a break for it. We spent two hours in a frustrating search, but it was only when we put our argument behind us, stood together, embracing, and prayed together that our cat returned. He didn’t make the evening perfect, but He used it for the good. That’s a much better story, but I’m scared to tell it sometimes. What will they think of Jesus that someone like me, someone who can bicker and argue for hours, follows Him? But then it’s not about me. So maybe they should know how God used our cat to scare us so badly that we ran back to each other and to Him, and then gave our cat back to us. We were married five months ago (as of the writing of this), and it’s been a hard five months. Everything I mentioned before has happened in those months. It has been one of the most painful times I’ve experienced. I never thought my wife would cry so much in her whole life, and yet she has done it all in five months. And yet, when I come home, and she’s been listening to sermons, reading the Bible, and telling me about all the cool things she’s learned about Jesus, I smile. She’s going to those things for comfort, and she’s growing because of them. It was worth it for me, and it’ll be worth it for her. |
