Taking a Swing at God
Where to Fix Your Sights in the Rough Times
Can I be brutally honest? 2019 was a rough year. Between difficult things going on with people near and dear to me, health issues that refuse to let up and wondering if I am failing… again, I hit a place in my journey this last September that felt like I was slogging uphill in snow, in air that was much too thin. I couldn’t seem to catch my breath before another blast of icy snow pelted my face. I was just plain weary.
Thankfully, I have never really had issues with being honest with God – like ugly honest. Though respectful and not forgetting that He is God and I am His creation, I’ve never held back. I’ve worried occasionally that He would turn a cold shoulder to my rants, but I’ve always let the Truth that He will never forsake me resonate deeper than the fear.
And last Fall, I had some words with God.
All of these things were swirling in my mind as the Hubs and I, along with our daughter and her family were waiting in a crowded and noisy lobby of a restaurant in early October. We’d been waiting about twenty minutes and our two-and-a-half-year-old grandson was doing remarkably well, though, understandably, growing a tad restless. He was standing right in front of me and spinning around. The spinning matching the spinning of my mind. Then he swatted at my leg. I teased him a bit, so he swatted harder - not maliciously, but playfully.
God doesn't need us to pray polished prayers. When we are hurting, even angry with God, will He accept our honest prayers? Will He turn a cold shoulder, recoil from our honesty or give us the silent treatment? #Prayer #BrokenHeart #HelpForTheHurting
He hit my leg and, although it didn’t affect me in the slightest, he instantly drew his hand back, wrapped his other hand protectively around it and stuck out his lower lip.
“Oh, did you hurt your hand, Bug?” I asked, wryly adding, “Did you hurt yourself hitting me?”
Of course, he nodded the affirmative and received the offered Boo-Boo Kiss that remedied all.
But my words, “Did you hurt yourself hitting me?” joined the spin cycle of words in my mind as I began to hear the Lord’s voice saying them to me.
Yes, Lord, I have. In all my swings at You, I have hurt myself.
I could almost tangibly feel His arms wrap around me and kiss the hurt away.
People will call me crazy, but I love the Book of Job. I love the deep, deep truths, the sarcastic words that fly off like wild sparks from the bonfire of pain and aimed at worthless “friends.” I love the promise that the story is not over and the best is yet to come and the generally unnoticed implications of the challenge of the Accuser.
I also love the gut-wrenching honesty of Job. He does not hold back. He does not polish his words before they fly out, unfiltered and brutal. Yet, Job’s virtue is that he never turns his back on God. In all his frustration and hurt and confusion, he does not turn and walk away. He faces God and is real with God. He takes his swings at God.
And in it all, God is there. He never turns His back either. He allows the finite to swing at the infinite, the struggling soul contained in ruptured flesh to throw its blows at the Creator of worlds.
He then wraps Job up in the reassurance that, though Job knows almost nothing of what he is battling, he is loved, he is seen, he is heard.
His words were amiss. God can be trusted, though it looked otherwise. God will be faithful, though he felt betrayed. God will never leave, though he felt so abandoned.
And it is no different for me than for Job. In all my swings at God, I will only injure myself and find that if I will just look a bit higher, into the eyes of my Savior, I will see that He has never changed.
“Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” Job 42:3
For more on how God is “Cheering You On,” click HERE!