What Do I Do Now?

One of the first poems I ever wrote was about lying alone on the edge of a cliff, broken into a million pieces, waiting for someone to come glue the pieces together.  I was a sad, hurting teenager, and didn’t know where to turn.  I was desperate for some person to swoop down and save me.
The saddest part was that, as messed up as I was, it never occurred to me that God was the one I could turn to, even though I had been raised in church all my life.  It never even crossed my mind that he could change my situation.  I believed he existed, but he was no more to me than a far-away stranger that I expected to see someday when I died.
It took 13 years for me to finally get sick and desperate enough to go looking for God, instead of sitting in my self-pity waiting for him to come to me.  To my astonishment, he was easy to find when I actually tried. 
Why had no one told me how this works?  It was so easy; yet none of the countless churches, songs, preachers I’d ever heard ever told me that God will be found when you look for him.  I mean—I didn’t know he could be found, so why would I look? 
Now I’m no longer on that ledge; no longer broken into pieces.  I have nothing in common with that lonely child.  I am whole and free; excitedly waiting for each new day in the adventure I’m now living with God.  But I am also angry.
I’m angry it took 13 years to find out who God is.  I’m angry I had opportunities to minister to children in my life, and had nothing real to give them.  I’m angry there are teens and adults desperately broken with no hope but to die and escape to Heaven.  Jesus is not an escape plan!  The reality of the kingdom of God has almost nothing in common with what I believed it to be as a young adult. 
What do I do with that anger?  I carry that reality to those around me who were never taught it either.   Let them know God has a good plan for them in this life, not just the one to come; that he wants to come down into their lives and change things, and how to get that to happen.  I become the one I was looking for all those years ago and help pick up their broken pieces.

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