#44 Coffee with the Creator.

I got up, made a cup of coffee and spent my first 30 minutes of the day either in prayer or reading the Word. I cannot tell you what a difference it makes to replace "the New adventures of old Christine" with the Bible. It's like replacing a lava lap (cute but useless) with the sun.

Today's reading was focused on how we develop perseverance. Apparently, it comes through suffering and trials. My favorite verse today was James 1:2-4

Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. (The Message, emphasis added)

Isn't that the truth - everyone can look all polished when things are dandy. It's when we are scared and the everything feels uncertain that who we are really comes to the surface. Do you really trust God? Do you really follow Christ? What about when you loose your job? Your home? A loved one? What about when people mock you? Or you feel stupid? How do you act when you feel desperate? Scared? Angry? Lost? Uncertain? That's the real you, the you, you don't have any energy to manufacture.

And don't stop half-way. Pay attention to the last part. God isn't just exposing our weakness and brokenness to mock us or humiliate us or show us imperfect. He's doing it to grow us, to prepare us.

Isn't that beautiful? Pain, exposure, vulnerability, imperfection - all present. But hope, forgiveness, maturity, meaning - all present too. Not pain because we deserve it, or because we just "need to see how cruddy we really are" but because God wants to make us more, make us better.

#45 I am just flat grateful to follow a God like that.

I mean just think about it. If you take the idea of God seriously (a uncreated being that created our reality), you have to admit that you (or people in general for that matter) have absolutely no say in what this being's qualities are. I mean God is going to be and desire whatever God is and desires - it is not going to change depending on my ideas or mood. God is God.

And it just so happens (of course this is from my, very Christian perspective), that God is good. Turns out He is really, really good. So good that there is no darkness in Him. So beautiful that he has no malice or brokenness or evilness at all. He is 100% love 100% of the time.

And given that I had absolutely no control over that - and yet it is; wow am I grateful! God could have been anything, with any number of detestable or wicked qualities and yet He is perfect. Beautiful.