One long stroll....

This week has truly been a miniature replica for the grand measure of my life. It has been the Saturday in between Good Friday and Easter. For too long now I have been living in the grief and guilt of the first disciples Saturday. Sometimes I feel resurrection will never come to me because I doubt it so highly. I am used to praying expecting little, and being satisfied with anything at all. Recently I have realized the lack of faith I put in my prayers. I doubt that God is listening, worse, sometimes I think he hears but doesn't care. I have focused so much energy on finding God outside hypocritical church institutions and dogma. Yet, so many Christians that have bought into the puddle deep morality of the "moral majority" claim to hear God speaking to them all the time.

Prayer, which God probably meant as a outlet for two way conversation has become a means to an end. Having so many prayers unanswered makes prayer a frustrating exercise that seem fruitless and dare I say worthless.

Like Job said, "What would we gain by praying to Him?"

I used to be afraid to get angry at God, not in fear that an "angry God" would destroy me, but rather the backlash from fellow Christians. I can't stand the immediate Sunday-school fed answers that come with mourning my circumstances. You don't think I know that other people have it worse off? That God's will is mysterious? Do these facts make life injustices any less crushing? And why, if all this is true, do 'you' reject these conclusions when you have problems?

I feel like I am always given a moral beating every time my faith slips even but for a moment.

This is the divine irony of my life.

Continuing, as I recited before, my fear of criticizing God: is in the past. Because if Christians truly want to keep prayer a polite conversation between God and Man, then they must throw out most of the old testament to validate their point. (which many have...)

However shallow my qualms with God, they are part of a long standing tradition of wrestling with the Almighty. Indeed, if you will yell at me for having such little faith, then likewise; Abraham, Moses, David, and the psalmist deserve your same regard.

Ugggh, why must I abandon the call of God's powerful kingdom every time I encounter a petty injustice???

Since this afternoon I have cooled down from such usual experiences that infuriate me. In true testament to what I have called "the divine irony of my life," it has come through the acknowledgement that some things just don't matter in the larger scheme of existence. Although I don't like others throwing this in my face, I actually gain allot from reminding myself of people with bigger problems then my own. In the book I'm reading by Phillip Yancy, He quotes a young girl who kept a secret journal while imprisoned in Auswitchz. She writes:

"Sometimes when I stand in some corner of the camp, my feet planted on Your earth, my eyes raised towards Your Heaven, tears sometimes run down my face, tears of deep emotion and and gratitude. And I want to be right there in the thick of what people call horror and still be able to say: Life is beautiful. Yes, I lie here in the corner, parched and dizzy and feverish and unable to do a thing. Yet I am also with the jasmine and the piece of the sky beyond my window. For once you have begun to walk with God, you need only keep walking with God and all life becomes one long stroll - a marvelous feeling."

Amazing: God.