I’m pondering this morning something I’ve come to know about God–something that actually gives me comfort, even when it sometimes frustrates me.
God does not always respond the way we want Him to, or the way we would respond were we in His shoes. He always responds as the situation demands.
I know I must have written about this before, because this isn’t the first time I’ve caught myself doing this–but I’m noticing that it’s one of those times where I’ve been so bogged down in my day-to-day activities that I have to purposely come up for air. To stop and take an inventory of what is around me.
I mentioned a couple of posts ago that as my stack of questions gets bigger and my stack of answers gets smaller, my blog gets less focused on opinion and more focused on reflection and observation. That’s not to say I won’t ever utter an opinion again (you should be so lucky)–just that I hold my own opinions more loosely than I used to, so things come out more as observation.
Over the past couple of months, the Denver Art Museum hosted a rare exhibit of the work of Vincent Van Gogh–a visual chronological journey of his development as an artist. Since The Wild One is pursuing her dream of becoming a serious artist, we simply couldn’t let the opportunity pass us by.
As we walked through the exhibit of rare drawings and paintings, we both found ways in which we related to Van Gogh–not the mental illness/cutting-off-one’s-ear part, but more along the lines of his deep passion, his being largely self-taught, his propensity for pushing the boundaries, and his need to create. (I related in a couple of other ways, too, which I’ll mention presently.)
The other day, I was watching NBC’s The Voice, and a scene unfolded that really spoke to me at the heart level.
Nicholas David, a bearded, long-haired, mountain-man-looking guy with an incredibly soulful voice, performed an excellent rendition of “Lean On Me”, accompanied by a gospel choir. After the performance, his coach Cee Lo Green began sharing his feedback, and he stopped and began to tear up. “My parents were both ministers, so the gospel is very close to me,” he told David. “I felt like I a child in the presence of my Maker, in the presence of the same Maker that made you.”
Aaaand there’s another popular song title hijacked. 
Okay, I know I said I wasn’t going to write a post about Chick-Fil-A (insinuated is more what I did)–and technically, this post isn’t about Chick-Fil-A, so I’m (sort of) keeping my word. Or my insinuation. Whatever.
But now that the uproar has died down a little bit, I feel like that whole ordeal showed us something about humanity in general–something that if we’re serious about living what we say we believe, and practicing what we preach, we should not overlook:
Today, I’d like to tell you the story of my friend Chuck.
I first met Chuck at college in Tulsa, when I signed up to go on a summer music ministry trip overseas. There were sixteen of us on our team: ten vocalists, four in the rhythm section, our team leader (preacher) and the sound guy. Chuck was one of the vocalists, and I led the rhythm section from the keyboard.
First things first–Happy Father’s Day to all the dads.
Actually, this morning is a good opportunity to me to ruminate on something that’s been going on in my head for awhile now. I’ve been thinking about the different ways God tries to describe Himself to us, and the word pictures He uses. Sometimes He describes Himself as a provider, other times a judge, sometimes an intercessor, sometimes a warrior, sometimes a lover/bridegroom, sometimes an advocate, sometimes a mother (one of the names for God, “El Shaddai,” literally means “the breasty one”).
Unless you have nothing to do with American sports at all, or live under a rock, chances are you’ve heard the name “Tim Tebow” sometime in the past several months. Living in Denver, the home of the Broncos, we probably hear more about him than all y’all. He’s the young quarterback who replaced Kyle Orton this year in the middle of a losing season, and somehow ended up turning things around and taking the Broncos to the playoffs for the first time in years. People in Denver have been buzzing about this guy ever since the Broncos picked him up, and Tebow jerseys were common in the stores and on people’s torsos back when he was still a third string QB. It’s obvious that he’s still getting used to playing pro, and he’s young and inconsistent (as demonstrated by last weekend’s fiasco at the playoffs)–but it’s also obvious that the guy is extremely talented. At any rate, he’s injected a level of hope and enthusiasm into Bronco fans that hasn’t been felt for a long time.
So the other day, The Director and I were talking, and somehow the conversation got onto the topic of fear, and the role that it plays in injustice. We began to observe how in so many cases, an injustice done to an individual or an entire people group happens because someone else was afraid.
It’s uncanny, actually, if you think about it, how many times you can see the fear factor in injustice.