flicker . thoughts

Observation: When you stare into a fire and let your eyes unfocus from looking at anything, the flickering of the embers makes them look like they move according to stop-motion animation.
Things aren't always what they seem.
(Experience: Even though a fire can make your skin hot, sometimes that quick heat isn't enough to take the chill out that has sunk down into your toes.)

I have felt frustrated, but not irate; critical, but not cynical. I feel uneasy about my last post because I think it toes a very fine line in this area, but I will not recall it. I take issue with behaviors, people, and institutions that promote the destruction of others (or the adoption of [self-]destructive behavior of others) not because I think that they are necessarily inherently evil in and of themselves, but because I do not like to see the ambiguous group of "others" hurt or so led astray by lies. I could probably work on being more gentle though. Am I making any sense?

The past three days have been difficult ones for me. Physically, I'm officially fighting a cold and emotionally - well, they've been a rough few days. Here's what I've come away with though...

As I sat on the floor, leaning against the wall with my knees hugged up to my chest while I cried, I couldn't help but wonder, "Where is God with me in this?" Sure, I know the concept that God mourns with those who hurt - that He shares the pain of His beloved, but I'm not sure that I really know it. I don't feel God crying with me. If anything, it feels more like I've done something wrong and God is sitting on the other side of a sterile white room cooly observing me, waiting for me to learn my lesson. Okay, I know that this isn't true...but when I can't feel God, it's hard to accept otherwise. My prayers become something a little more like Psalm 88, and even if what I learned about "pain revealing Christ's love for me" becomes a little bit more real, it's still a minimal improvement as my head and my heart fight against each other to acknowledge it.

I was recently pointed towards the story of Gideon as encouragement about feeling inadequate regarding whatever my future may be. I wasn't quite up to scratch in remembering Gideon's story, so I decided to re-read it. It's funny... About 4 o'clock AM, I read before work and had only a few minutes to get what I could. I speed-read while I waited in the dark parking lot for my coworker to show up so that we could start the opening shift. During that time God served me something great. In the dim lighting of a street lamp, I scanned the header, "Midean Oppresses Israel," and then moved on to "The call of Gideon." I read the first 5 verses before my coworker came, but that's all I needed. I absolutely love the opening: Israel is being absolutely thrashed by Midian...enter our character in Judges 6:11-13:

11 Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. 12 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, “The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.” 13 And Gideon said to him, “Please, sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.”

The angel of the Lord shows up, tells Gideon that the Lord is with him, and Gideon's response is, "Oh yeah? Then why does life suck so much?" I identify with this guy so much, it's almost shameful sometimes.
And yet, for all that (and more)...God uses him in mighty ways (as the rest of Judges 6, 7, and 8 testify).

So I'm left with this disconnect between my heart and my head that God loves me, that He doesn't abandon me for "not being good enough," and that He goes through the pain with me - not apart from me. I guess it's just up to the Holy Spirit to work with me to get that head knowledge to seep down into my heart...