Since I posted this where-do-you-go-when-youve-no-where-to
I still feel essentially the same. There are no answers, and only an assurance that we've simply not understood and that much of evangelical teaching about the character of God and his 'son' (how many have thought what the phrase 'son of God' means to people today compared to the idea of the ultimate being sending a part of Himself to be human and walk among us).
Perhaps there are no answers, other than if that's what your faith is (that's how you view the world) then that's how you'll interpret what happens to you.
I've found my blog roll again, after years and years locked out, so I've been sneakily reading yours again this month.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you want commentary or not, so if you don't, you can ignore me and I won't be offended.
Two years ago I became convinced that I was hearing God say "Get ready to move". I had been missing my family in Canada for a few years and wishing for a reasonable reason to leave our comfortable life in Wisconsin. So I did. I got ready. It was the same voice I've known as God's since I was 6, and I was fully convinced, so I started packing, I downsized, I put away my garden and got my paperwork in order - if you believe in your heart, and have faith, right?
And then nothing happened. None of the proofs I put in place worked out. There was no job to go to, no house to go to, no good reason to leave.
It's not the same as losing someone, I know. But it was the first time in my life that my little voice inside had been wrong. It completely shattered my previous understandings of who God was, and who he had always been to me. I couldn't pray for a solid 9 months at all, and even now, I pray differently.
I still don't have an explanation for it, for why I thought I was hearing that, so clearly, for so many months.
But just like the disciples, "where else would I go?" God has been my constant, seeking truth and love and holiness is an integral part of who I am at this point.
So now I don't trust any voices, I'm more sceptical of other people's prayers, and I pray differently. But somehow I can't stop believing that God is with us. Whatever that means.
It does make it hard to join the church though.
(And we did finally move back to Canada this fall. But I've been in a progressively deeper depression over the past couple years, intensified by Trump's Covid America, and I'm only just starting to surface. So don't hold me to anything too hard, and add heaps of salt)
Hi Johanna, the comment's welcome. I'll try to reply properly at some stage - only just saw that you posted, and as you'll have noticed, things are quiet here now.
ReplyDeleteI get this ... totally. I find it hard to be triumphalist ever since our own loss of 6 people in 5 years ... and so I tended towards 'fatalism' and what will be, will be - and felt deeply uncomfortable with prayers and pray-ers that tried to 'make' things happen. But recently I felt that that approach wasn't quite 'right' and felt as if what would be right was 'realism'. Got can heal, but he doesn't always. Why I don't know ... wish I did, but our reality is flawed by all sorts of pain... what we do with that is the thing, I guess.
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