Friday, December 22,2006

I was delighted to see on the national news the other day that there is now a trend among college students to "seek God." Hearing that made me wish that I could reach out to them and say, "Just ask. " In my own life, it took over forty years of "seeking" because I insisted upon making it a complicated intellectual pursuit. "WHY ?" was my reply to much of scripture. I had the need to have every single "WHY?" answered to my satisfaction before I would agree to believe.

If someone had said to me many years ago that I was a person filled with pride I would have been completely stunned and would have refused to accept that as the truth. Yet that, indeed, was the truth. I was not filled with pride, as in "I feel I am superior to other people." There's a different sort of "pride." It's the one where a person is so lacking in humility that they steadfastly cling to the notion of "prove it to me, for I MUST have an answer better than my own which is pleasing to me."

I'm reminded of the character in Lord of the Rings , Gollum, who refers to the ring as "My Precious". Gollum would rather live in a cave, alone, miserable and bereft of companionship of his own kind than to give up his "Precious". He'd prefer death. I can understand that character very well. For forty years of my adult life, I was Gollum. I clung fast to my life without God, preferring it, cherishing it, not wanting to give it up UNLESS it could be proven to me without any doubt whatsoever intellectually that God not only existed, but had something better to give to me. "My Precious."

I pray that the young people of today are a lot smarter than I was..that those who are seeking God for the very first time in their twenties will realize immediately that the concept of God's "grace" is just not something that the human mind can easily grasp. I hope that they let it come..accept it, welcome it..ask for it. It's SO SIMPLE. Attempting to have complete understanding of "WHY" as a condition of belief will have them wandering in the desert of confusion as I did. It's a lonely place.
I marvel a hundred times a day why God should choose to love me. But love me, He does..and the very thought of it blows me away.



Revelations 21:5-8