So at 3:30 in the morning, I sat up listening to Donald Miller speaking at Mars Hill Bible Church up in Michigan, and you can
download the message yourself if you wish. I have read one of Don's books and my friend Michael lives out in Portland and has, on occasion, attended the church the Don Miller references in the book "Blue Like Jazz," so for some reason, I feel a special connection to Don Miller even though it's completely undeserved. But anyway, when I saw I could download his message, I jumped at the chance. Now anybody who has read one of his books or listened to him speak knows that he is just honest. He verbalizes or textisizes the things we've always felt are off about life, Christian or not. He spoke, in this particular case, about how God is fathering us. I found this particularly interesting since he had no father to speak of since his dad ran off when he was a kid. But he references the fact that God is our father, and he used a bit of a metaphor of a father that he had lived with who's child threw a fit over chicken nuggets one night. This child was apparently writhing on the floor screaming out in her need for chicken nuggets and basically the story boiled down to the father saying..."I got all night. You're not getting chicken nuggets, come to the table, and eat what I've provided for you."
Now I really hate it when it takes no thought for a message to pierce me to the core. I hate to feel that I'm so simple that something like that can just nail me, but it's true. In that moment, I thought of about ten "fits" I've been throwing. Sadly, I'm not even screaming at God demanding my chicken nuggets. I almost feel like God should know I want my nuggets so I'm just going to sit and pout and wait for people to ask me what's wrong so I can just say that my jerk of a dad won't give me my chicken nuggets. For a long time I used to almost lord over people the fact that I've never been mad at God, and I used to almost chastise people who told me they were mad at him. But I just grew up with a dad who would have none of it, I couldn't really scream at my dad because he'd just smack me and shoe me off to my room. I wasn't allowed to get mad at my dad, and I knew it did no good. Well this translated ok to my spiritual life to a point. It's good to know the getting mad at God really doesn't get you anywhere, but I guess I just realized (mostly while typing this) that sitting in the corner pouting waiting for somebody to come to me and ask me what's wrong, perhaps a more caring mother who could turn dad's decision, was not going to be a healthy way to interact with God either. God obviously has no wife who's going to come up to him and say "Did you know Jeff's upset, I think you should give him what he wants because he's miserable."
In my life, I'm kind of miserable about certain things that I've asked God to fix. Like the fact that I'm single, the fact that I'm a bit of a failure as a musician (in my mind, that wasn't some sad attempt to fish for compliments), the fact that I seem to have not a lot of direction in life, the list goes on. And I know I can't boss God around so I pray like this "God, I know you know best and you run things the way you do, but if in my perfect world, I could really use......such and such." Well obviously that doesn't trick God. But still, I sit here and wonder when things are going to start going my way. Which is so selfish when I sit back and look at it since I can see all of the amazing things God has given me already. I KNOW God knows better than me and I KNOW that me just being pouty about it isn't going to fix it. So why do I do it then? Once I stopped and thought about it for about ten seconds from God's perspective, daddy perspective, I actually kinda had to laugh at myself down there ignoring my dinner because I didn't get my chicken nuggets (which the more I'm learning about McDonald's, are horrible for me). I can see, to a certain extent, why God doesn't want me to have those things right now, or how I have them and I don't see it. I just need to live a life that says, "Ok dad, I'll have ham loaf (and yes dad, I still hate ham loaf) and be satisfied."
Lastly, and then I'll shut up, Don talked about stars. He told a story about a time he was out with a friend of his and they were looking at the stars and then he asks his friend John, in regards to the stars, "Why do you think God did this?" to which his friend replied "to dazzle us." I agree with that very much, but I also see it this way. I almost see space and the stars and a lot of things in science as kind of his daddy trump card. The fact that the universe goes on forever, for eternity, makes absolutely no sense to me. The thought that the universe just somehow came to into existence is impossible for me to comprehend, no matter how well Stephen Hawking tries to explain it. Every time science creates an answer to one of these questions, they create ten more questions. I guess there's some great job security as a scientist because all you do it create more problems for yourself to not answer. There are things in this world that just don't make any sense to us at all. And I feel like that's God's way of saying, "I know more than you can ever know, and I understand things that you can't. Stop trying to usurp me, because you can't. Just trust me, you'll understand when you're older."
