Sometimes we think listening for God means we must listen for some omniscient booming voice, a cross between an echo and Marlon Brando in Superman. Some people do have some great stories. Mine have always been the indirect kind, the right song getting into the car after share group, meeting that certain person, good conversations and being convicted at church. It can even come from books we are reading and movies we see. It's also being more intentional and being open to listen. I don't want my moment with God to be on the downward spiral of some benign event. I want them to come in the mundane, the ritual, the part of life you least expect.
God spoke to me in the form of 4 fifth grade boys who were destined to be separated due to their past year's behavior. Each time one of them morphs their face into some ball of pouty immaturity, He speaks. Or when one steals a homework, erases the name and enters his own in hopes of getting credit, He speaks. Or when they perform outside of their expected zone of failure, He speaks.
God spoke to me at the gym last week, when some random stranger with chiseled arms stepped out of his way to give me a hi-five as I lumbered through a set in the circuit. It's been in the form of text messages from friends. It was in the voice of my mom. He lies in the heart of my sister.
Tonight He spoke to us in a movie. My son and I have been pausing through segments from "Life of Pi" over the past week. The kids ask so many questions when we are watching something at home I'm pausing to get through it all. Eventually we get to the meat of the intro, when Pi begins to find his foundations in God. His mother is a Hindu and he's shown sneaking through a comic book like adaptation of Krishna. Later, he meets Christ through a series of encounters with a priest. He cannot understand how God loves the world of sinners but he finds himself enamored with this Jesus character. Later, he finds the ritualistic prayers in the Arabic tongue to his liking and begins to incorporate Muslim practices into his daily life as well.
During dinner, his scientific father and disapproving brother chastise him over his juvenile theology. Cruz chimes in, "They should just leave him alone." He sounds a little like the boys' mother from the film. Cruz, of course, sees everything through a Jesus prism. He does not know about the world's other religions that will surely try to contradict his views. But he hears "God" and knows it to be His. One in the same. Clear cut.
So the movie gets paused. I give an elementary synopsis of Hinduism and Cruz jumps into asking me if I was always a Christian. i love these questions. I tell him I knew God existed, I knew what Jesus did in only a definitive verb-like sense, but not what it meant to me personally. This past summer he accepted Jesus into his heart at summer camp. I told him it was something like this that occurred some years back for me. You can't just know of God. You have to bring him into your heart. You have to want to be like Jesus. (Meanwhile, my little girl is telling the entire house she is definitely a Christian because she wants to be like Jesus everyday.)
I don't even know the segueway from one conversation to the next. But my wife came in next from the kitchen after being asked the same questions I had been answering. I know that in her faith walk there was a time of acceptance and a time of doubt. Much of that doubt stemmed from a suicide in her family. It would be disrespectful to bridge that sentence with that story. It's not mine to tell, but I can reflect on the impact the story had on my children. Reycina, to her, all is black and white.
That's just stupid.
My son is the questioner. He has to see the logic in the actions. He cannot go from point A to B without all the connections making sense. I know the leap from what drove his deceased Uncle Terry to take his own life will not be understood by a 4th grader considering the family that loved him undeniably still wrestles with that question. But the topic brought forward more conversation about the words we choose and the feelings we generate sometimes conflict with God's overall plan.
Doubt. Just one seed grows like a mustard tree. Unlike faith, doubt can course through your veins like some disease only a filmmaker could fathom. Scanners. In the end battle between good and evil, the Scanners, from an old science fiction film I loved by David Cronenberg, literally stood before one another trying to melt one another's minds using nothing but glances and sound effects. Doubt battles faith each and everyday. I'm a true believer of it. It sometimes festers in me. I prune one seed of doubt and the devil plants another. Jesus pulls me free from the vines and I go and step into the briar patch once again. Doubt about which direction. Another movie comes to mind. Tom Hanks at the end of Castaway. In a movie full of great moments and grand decisions, he can't realize figure out if he should follow the girl of his dreams. Seriously? That's Jesus looking at my movie. He's released it from the pause button and shaking his head and wondering why i'm still in the same place. Seriously? When does this movie ever begin?
I know my life's greatest hits are in his Netflix queue.
No comments:
Post a Comment