Settling For Scraps?

One of the others in this alley found my stash, a carefully hidden plastic sandwich bag with pictures and notes from loved ones, which was carefully taped to the backside of a small electrical box. 

Anxiety... so many thoughts: upheaval, abandonment, fear, loss, betrayal. I felt the tide of anger coming in increasing waves. Did I have a choice but to lash out? I thought to myself, "What does my certain knowledge of some kind of beautiful future life do for me when that which is most cherished on this earth is taken away?" 

I froze...and then I slowly repeated aloud, "when that which is MOST cherished? Is taken away?" Had I really allowed the meager items that filled that bag to become cherished and relied upon more than the king who had saved me with His own blood? 

Words like thunder pealed across my sky, "Stop looking among those scraps! I have relieved you of them so that you will LOOK TO ME!"

Something like a warm whisper began to tease at my heart's periphery. It was like the warmth I felt as a young child eating my grandmas chicken gravy on a Sunday afternoon, the hearty laughter of my best friend sharing an exquisite moment of humor, loves sweetest and most solemn vow, the strong, and steadying embrace of my father, long-since passed. 

I have learned that for me, a sense of anxiety waves the red flag that there is most assuredly idolatry in my heart. Some woefully inadequate god is being asked to fulfill my deepest needs. My wounded soul hurts and tries to patch the holes. Even after all of this time, it is still my knee-jerk response to pain. I think I need a better version of me, or a somebody else. I search for some THING, or I strap my hopes to concentrated and wholly misguided religious effort.

Lord Jesus, please help me daily to remember that "It is finished!" None of my feeble efforts are required because the strong arms of my Savior have accomplished all that I never could.

(2 Corinthians 1:3-5)

A Question at the Core

Behold, the confidence and surety with which a child lifts his eyes and proclaims the answer to some mystery that befits the human mind at such a tender age. Where do frogs come from? Why does the truck make such a loud noise? Why do bees sting?

What right does the child have to think he holds the answers to such things? In this post-modern world where "reason" dominates, shouldn't some adult guide chastise him for imagining that he holds the answers to such things that are so far beyond him? Shouldn't someone sweep in with the "Origin of Species", charts of the modern diesel engine, or a naturalist guide to the defense mechanisms of plants and animals. 

Further, how dare he believe that there is enough coherence in the natural world to imagine that there would be a logical reason for anything?

How dare he grow to graduate through the stages of life, glory in the beauty and grace of his wife, and search through the night sky to find an answer to a question that is too deep to ask, sensing that there must be an answer. 

Why does the natural man have to be taught, using such ordered and well labeled arguments, that there are no coherent answers? Why must hope be expertly pulled from his grasping hands?

Without God, there is no coherence, no argument, no invention, no answers, no hope. There is no peg board with which to hang speech, thought or even the passage of time. 

Those that argue for the randomness of existence use borrowed language, borrowed reason and borrowed time.

We love that child for his searching heart, because it speaks of that unfathomable, greater mystery which beckons all of our searching hearts, and cannot honestly be denied. 

Ask yourself this:

Why is there a question at our core?

And if a question defines the human condition, might there be an answer? Could it be that we were designed to ask it?