How many of us have been stood up? You are supposed to meet someone and they never showed up. Or perhaps they say they will call and you wait but they never do. Perhaps later you find out you were stood up because someone offered to buy a round at the bar and they would have rather had free beer. Maybe someone went into the hospital unexpectedly and they rushed up there and forgot to call. Or you were stood up because they didn’t have the courage to tell you that they didn’t really want to meet you in the first place. Perhaps they never called because they didn’t really want to talk to you but didn’t know how to part without saying, “I’ll call you later.” Regardless of the reason– whether legitimate or not, whether we understand the reasoning or not – there is a certain amount of embarrassment and pain at showing up and no one meeting you.
Perhaps you were the one doing the standing up. Perhaps it was an emergency that kept you from meeting them. Maybe you really meant to call but you just got busy and forgot. Or could it have been that you just didn’t know how to say that you weren’t interested in developing/maintaining a relationship.
I got thinking about this because of something a friend said to me when I asked her to pray for me and related how I felt that there was a wall between me and God. She asked me if I am still reading the Bible and talking to him. I said “yes” because I was still talking to him a little and reading his Word to a certain degree (while looking for reasons for the wall) but I could see how my meeting times with him were shorter, less frequent and my mind was elsewhere when I did show up. The more I got thinking about it the more I realized that I had allowed my feelings to be hurt because he was not talking to me in the same way. I had allowed my praying frequency and fervency to be swayed by the cares of life and the spiritual growth that had become unbearably painful. In the midst of that pain, I quit showing up. I envision God showing up at our usual meeting time and place and after a while when I didn’t show up, turning aside with his head hung low in grief and walking away. How many times has he showed up to commune with me but I allowed my hurt feelings and growing pains to hinder me from meeting with him. How many times has he sat waiting on me to show up so he could share words of wisdom, understanding and enlightenment but I failed to put aside earthly distractions so I could hear him. How many opportunities did I miss of being able to minister to him and him to me because I didn’t show up.
It is my desire to have that intimacy with God that only comes from intimate conversation, honesty and “showing up.” I don’t ever want God to walk away from our meeting place brokenhearted because I failed to meet him there.
No comments:
Post a Comment