Keys and Life

Keys and Life:

One of my son’s favorite shirts is a bright yellow T-shirt with lots of different kinds of navy blue robots on it. When getting dressed in the morning I’ll ask him, “What shirt do you want to wear?” More often than any other he’ll say (in his hilarious attempt to impersonate an electronic ‘robot voice’) “Robot shirt! Robot shirt! Robot shirt!”  I ask about what shirt he wants to wear because I care deeply about him and his happiness.

Some years ago I was working with a client who arrived late. After arriving she apologized saying, “Sorry. I spent like fifteen minutes looking for my keys and couldn’t find them – so I stopped and asked God to help me, and He did.” She held up and jiggled the keys as if it were authentic evidence that God not only exists – but that He was genuinely interested in the location of her keys and all the miniscule details of her life.  My laugh was clearly condescending because she instantly asked, “What’s so funny? You don’t think God cared about my keys?” “Not really,” I said.  “Why not?” she fired back.  “I just think God has bigger things to deal with than the location of your keys.” “Well you’re wrong. I’m His child and he cares about my keys and every single detail of my life.  He created me in His image and likeness and fashioned me in my mother’s womb. I don’t know what good any god would be that was disconnected, disinterested or incapable of caring about and helping us.”  Point – Set – Match.

When someone is outside of the family of God their thoughts and ideas about who God is are colored by the experiences of their lives.  The child who has been dipped in hot oil by her father can’t imagine a Father who would care about her breathing – never mind her deepest joys and dreams.  Her human experience stains the canvas black, thus rage and hurt become a source of tainted power.  Now, she easily dismisses ‘God’ as either:

A. Incompetent: “Why didn’t God stop it from happening?”

B. Indifferent: “Clearly God doesn’t care about me.”

C. Imaginary: “There is no God – not a personal one anyway.”

The ominous discrepancy between ‘are’ and ‘ought’ points us in the direction of the solution.  Everyone knows that things in the world are NOT as they ought to be.  We desire justice, peace, serenity… and love. We desire them the most when we are deprived of them.  Your desire for peace pales in comparison to the parent whose son/daughter is at the war-front – or has already been laid to rest.  Similarly, your desire for love pales in comparison to the person who has never known it.  We desire most deeply the things of greatest value – yet the experiences and circumstances of human history and our personal lives have painted our canvas black.  We cope through personal deceit and thinly veiled arguments, but the foreboding sense of ‘ought’ never departs – never subsides – never evaporates.

God has nothing better to do today than to know YOU as His own – and that includes every intimate and miniscule detail: your shirt…  your keys… your life.  Why disparage and dismiss God for what you have deemed as sourced in His incompetence, indifference, or imaginary status – when at the SAME TIME your admittingly desperately desire those VERY things more fully, more completely and perfectly than anything you’ve ever experienced, but dared and dreamed to imagine?

He cared enough to create the entire universe with one tiny blue dot in it for YOU.  He cared enough to then step down from heaven and go to the Cross for YOU.  He cared enough to pave the way and extend His hand in fellowship – inviting, but never forcing, YOU to follow.  Quiet all the noise and nonsense for a moment…  Listen and YOU can hear, “Come to me, all who labor endlessly, who are crushed, exhausted and humiliated by life, and I will give you rest.”

Then, like the psalmist, YOU will know: “I am poor and needy; Yet the LORD thinks upon ME!”

God cares about your shirt, your keys, and your life.

Blessings,

-Kevin