In Good Faith

We are people programmed for innovation and improvisation.  We're built, it seems, to respond to whatever's around us and somehow find a way to make that work.  Or at least to make sense of it.  Or in it, to make sense of ourselves and our God.

It's how we relate to the world: by creating our way through it and pulling the pieces together to meaning.  To purpose.

It's how we discover God.  At least, I know that's true so often for me.  I find God most frequently, most powerfully, and most deeply when I'm somehow able to weave my way through weirdness and encounter something wholly and holy beyond myself that seems to have brought me through or at least showed me how and then I'm standing face-to-face with this good and gracious God.  And I get Him.

But sometimes, I wonder about God...and about faith...when there's not a lot for me to do.  Not when things are bigger than me.  No.  When things are bigger than me, I can't seem to help but lean on a greater God I can almost sort of fathom maybe.  Faith isn't so hard for me in the hard times.  Because that's when I need Him.  That's when I'm seeking.  That's when I'm searching...and He is gracious to let me find Him.

Faith for me is hardest on the good days.  When everything is just going well.  When things are running smoothly.  When there's not really anything to create my way through, nothing standing in my way.  An invitation to relax, to enjoy for a little bit.  A good graciousness that envelops me.  And I do kind of find myself looking for God but I'm keenly aware that it's harder to find Him because there's just not some specific path to take.  Not some obstacle to plow through or climb over or create around.  Not an active adventure for me to bond my strength to His and work it all out.

It's all Him.

In those times, I don't really know what to do with myself.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not complaining that sometimes, life is simply good.  That there isn't always something to fight.  I love the God of the goodness, too.  It's just that the Good God is a different sort of God.  He's the God who's there when you're not really thirsty for Him.  Not water in the desert.  Not food in the famine.  Just this quiet, still comfort.  This little unignorable presence.

And I guess maybe it's because we are a people so focused on "do."  We have to have something to do.  We have to be doing something.  And if everything is good, if everything is so perfectly good that you couldn't possibly improve upon it....or at least good enough that you wouldn't take the bait of a bad second at the cost of the overwhelming good...then what are we doing?

What are we doing and what is God doing?  Is He just...being....good?  Is that...ok?  Is that...awkward for anybody else?

I'm of the mind that we are people who are constantly figuring out our faith.  Figuring out where God is, what He's doing, who He is, whether we trust Him, how much we trust Him, and so on and so forth.  It's easy to do that when life is life.  When today is today and there are questions for tomorrow and your heart is thirsty and you're so hungry for Him that you're going after Him with everything in you, working your way through, creating a way to get to your Creator and discover Him, living in that intuition of all He's created you to be, and coming and finding and knowing and believing.  And having faith.  

That's the easy God.

Our toughest God is the one that has us asking, in moments of stillness, in times of simple good....uhm, God, what's up with this?  Can we just believe in that God?  Can we just love Him and hold Him and honor Him when there's nothing really up?  When this is just...this...and it's just...good?

In good...is there a way to keep faith?

There is.  We just have to settle into that a little more and change the way we think about God.  Change the way we hunger and thirst for Him.  Change our expectations of the way we find Him.  Change our attitude toward good to make room for more faith.

Settle into it and humble ourselves that there is a good God - and there is a faith - that we don't "do."  There is a God who simply is.

So let your faith simply be.