Laura and I slipped in and listened to our son Gordon give his first public talk (our Living Hope school - grades K-12). He was talking about how he was a Hopeless Romantic. He blamed us as parents because his first movie to watch (VHS) was The Little Mermaid. He was funny telling the story and we remember how we had to stop the movie and explain to him it would all turn out good. Gordon then transitioned into a story of his cousin Montana who was desperate and asked God for a sign (most of these kind of stories you either love or hate). Montana had just come out of a meeting at college and in the devotional one of the girls gave, they challenged everyone to visualize God by thinking something physical (a flower, tree, cross, . . . ). Montana prayed that warm sunny day, "God if you really like me, show me a snowflake."
No snowflakes arrived. All summer and fall, still no snowflakes. Even November and December were void of any snowflakes. Then one February, early morning, Montana was at school walking and crying . . . and so aware that life was not good . . . there was no sense of a personal God . . . no God who smiles and likes you enough to let you know he is there with you. She then felt the sun in her eyes (Eastern Washington) and when she looked up the entire school lawn was covered with frozen snowflakes. Thousands of crystallized snowflakes. Only then could she be thankful that she had not seen a snowflake before. This was the absolute perfect time in her life for a trust signature of God's smile!
As Gordon told the story I was touched by the fact that there wasn't just this one snowflake experience, but over and over Montana, like me, would hit difficult times and again wonder, "God, where are you? Do you care?" For Montana, there have been reminders more than once of God's care through a snowflake. Once, when leaving a Barnes and Noble (having just given up on God again) she was confronted with a large poster advertising a book on snowflakes. There it was, a giant snowflake. Wouldn't you think that
if someone got multiple snowflake signs they would stop wondering why God seemed to keep leaving them? No. We just aren't like that!Maybe I should choose a sign that's everywhere, like a STOP SIGN! Maybe, if I really need a sign and get nothing, God has cut me out or isn't really a personal God after all? Does the sign become proof? Could we control the God of the universe by demanding a sign ("And if you don't show up God, that's a sign too!")? What's the point?
Out of my son's talk I was hit, a good hit, with these thoughts (Are you still reading?):
1) Do I sometimes tell God that my eyes are shut and I refuse to look for Him unless He shows up as my own personal "snowflake"?
2) Is God speaking, showing up, very close to me; and it's my senses, my limits on how I see, that are blunted and crammed into religious boxes so that I'm totally oblivious to Him?
3) Why don't I see God as showing up via my fellow humans? (I would NEVER have believed in God if it weren't for my dad and wife. God used humans to write the Bible and God came down and zipped on human skin . . . Maybe God's best signs come in human form?)
In Gordon's story it became so snowflake clear, for me, that God used my son as a GIANT snowflake for his cousin Montana. Her sharing her story; and him listening and caring, was another snowflake from God! That February morning when Montana saw the millions of snowflakes, they had been there before, but the sun and tears accented them is such a way that she noticed them and felt them touch her heart. Hundreds of other students saw those same snowflakes but are, perhaps, still unaware of God's smile and wonderful laughter.
Like the song, "looking for love in all the wrong places . . ." maybe I need to look first for God's smile, His "I like you!" in the eyes and hearts of people. Maybe for me, I just need to keep asking? Maybe I need to relax as to when I see my next snowflake.
Gordon used a very cool verse from Psalms in his talk (David, a struggling agnostic at times, often prayed prayers like this: "Where the heck are you God? I thought you were supposed to be close to me, I thought you were supposed to care?" It's David who wrote the particular Psalm that my son read yesterday. And if this verse is true, then perhaps GOD is the greatest Hopeless Romantic and God is coming close to you right now (most likely through people)! Read this amazing verse right now (if you like)! I believe God can't stop thinking about me, you, everyone. I'm the one who struggles believing it. I'm the one who can participate in letting my friendship help someone else believe. I want to join my son as another Hopeless Romantic.
Are you willing to be God's Hopeless Romantic for someone (Maybe anyone?) today?
Will you risk asking God for a sign? (Yes, I do understand that reading this may make you feel nauseated or irritated, because you've asked and got nothing, no snowflake. Not even a drop of water.) Right now?
4 comments:
Excellent blog, although as someone who has spent a lifetime asking for signs and then only trusting them when they gave the answer I desired (if I bothered to recognize them at all) the story of Montana hits a bit too close to my wheelhouse. Trying to divine God's plan for my life has bedeviled me for so many years that I have basically given up and slipped into bitterness, melancholy, and the infinite sadness.
Signs? For years I've been putting the fleece out on my lawn, although I suppose only when I'd run out of answers and was desperate for "The Plan", my heavenly ace in the hole. But hmm...since I refused to read the instruction manual was the sign supposed to be that the fleece was wet and the ground dry or the other way around? Asking for answers shouldn't just lead to more questions. And what do you do if during the night someone steals your fleece or it simply disappears altogether? Especially if you just feel too tired and discouraged to replace it anymore.
Congratulations to Gordon on his first big talk. There will be many more and they will all be meaningful. I used to be a hopeless romantic myself. In love with the idea of being in love, yet never really finding what I was looking for. After a torturous and destructive journey I I finally found it with my wife, but along the highway of life I guess I drove past the off ramp to a loving God. Must have missed the road sign.
Signs? Sorry, but in keeping with your musical theme this week I just have to toss in a bit of the Five Man Electrical Band from around 1971. I think it does a great job of summing up your philosophy of religion, not to mention that it's titled..well..SIGNS.
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?
And the sign said, "Everybody welcome. Come in, kneel down and pray"
But when they passed around the plate at the end of it all, I didn't have a penny to pay
So I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own little sign I said, "Thank you, Lord, for thinkin' 'bout me. I'm alive and doin'fine."
Keep the faith, Bruce. Keep the faith...
Dear Gid,
I too have asked for signs, way too much. Perhaps the story of Gideon in the Bible wasn't to highlight how great it is to ask for signs, but how God is better than the ultimate, good father, who understands the heart of his kid.
Most of my signs were for "direction" or "deliverance" - getting out of my own stupid consequences. I think the "upper division" signs are "Are you with me?" or "Do you really care about me?" When I don't hear anything regarding these cries I often retreat, like Montana did (I still can find myself doing that). I still think OUR connection to each other is the #1 fleece!
Praying for you - Bruce
As always, thanks Bruce. Your words are true, especially about the importance of friendship. As I have said before, I think it is the greatest, most important, and precious gift of all. I deeply value your's.
In fact, can I add just one more for Music Week? Elton John's "Friends". Change light to the divine Light in the second verse and who knows? We both may have some hope yet. Have a great weekend bud.
I hope the day will be a lighter highway
For friends are found on every road
Can you ever think of any better way
For the lost and weary travellers to go
Making friends for the world to see
Let the people know you got what you need
With a friend at hand you will see the Light. If your friends are there then everything's all right
It seems to me a crime that we should age
These fragile times should never slip us by
A time you never can or shall erase
As friends together watch their childhood fly
thanks, Bruce, for these thoughts (& all your other posts too, such good stuff!). It's so easy to miss the ways God has already said "I love you" to us, multiple signs through people or through his word (that Psalm 139 verse is a perfect example) or through parts of his creation like Agrippa's dog Jackson. Yet we're apt to miss these things because WE want to dictate how God should show up. Maybe a good prayer is simply, "God, open up my eyes to what you've already shown me, about your love & who you are!"
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