THE Miracle of God

When we stop to really think about God, we cannot help but recognize that He is awesome and full of miraculous power. He is the creator of all that we see. In creation, He was able to make sense out of chaos. Where we might have looked around and detected a mess, God was able to envision a universe. Who else but God could take extreme opposites like light and darkness, the concepts of up and down, east/west and north/south, all of which existed in a timeless void and come up with order, time and space? No one else but God!

What about the miraculous displays of His power and wisdom in our lives? We do not do the things we used to do. Those things we could not resist nor handle no longer have their hold on us. Those nasty words we spoke we no longer allow to pollute our mouths. Where we used to act as if God was the furthest thing from our minds, we now recognize that we cannot live without Him. There were illnesses we could not shake, emotional depressions we could not climb out of, bad relationships we could not get out of our system, financial obligations we could not pay and broken hearts that we thought would destroy us. But thank God, He worked miracles in our lives!

But what is THE miracle of God? As we ponder Him, it is no wonder that we are drawn to Him. He is a creator, a protector, a rock in a weary land, a lover of our souls, a healer, a keeper and so much more. Of course we will worship God! He is worthy of every ounce of praise we can muster. Only a fool would not honor such an awesome being!

It is a spiritual no-brainer that we serve and honor God. It only makes sense to do so, even though so many miss what is so obvious to us. To me, THE miracle of God is that He even bothers with us. Who are we that He should even be mindful of us? We can’t enhance Him. We can’t give Him something that He doesn’t already own. We have no political connections or network affiliations that would benefit Him. It is inexplicable that He has chosen to love us anyway without condition.

Given THE miracle of God’s choice to put up with us, how ironic is it that we choose to not nurture our relationships with each other? How many potential interactions have we destroyed because the person was not pretty enough, not politically powerful enough, not slick enough, not rich enough, not strong enough or not enough enough? God chose to put His ego to the side, yet we have allowed our pride to shatter our connections to each other. While God chose love as His mode of connection to us instead of fear or intimidation or domination, so many of us have allowed our fears to ruin our links with each other. For many of us, instead of truly loving each other, we have desperately sought to dominate or intimidate others into relating to us.

Bottom line - God granted us THE miracle of His willingness to bond to us, but we have denied that same miracle in our platonic, family and romantic relationships.

In 2007, I pray that THE miracle God has given us will be repeated in our relationships with each other.

Solitude Is Not For Everyone

Because of God’s grace, there are some things He keeps us from having to go through that we are not able to handle. We may think we are as bad as we wanna be and nothing can get the best of us, but most of us are smart enough to know that we are not “all that”. We may never admit it, but there are some challenges or fears or people or whatever that we are no match for. Thank God for His keeping power!

I think solitude is one of those things that some people cannot handle. For those people, they would rather go to the dentist than have to deal with being alone. For these people, they will do all kinds of things to avoid the “curse” of being alone including staying in bad relationships, getting together with old boyfriends or girlfriends who they know are not good for them, wandering aimlessly around public places like the mall or clubs or joining organizations to just be around other people. Hey whatever works!

For me, I spend a lot of time by myself. I admit that it is not always something I voluntarily do, but that is the way things are for me. It’s kind of funny at times that people will not believe me when I say that I spend what I think are inordinate portions of my weekends and holidays alone. They assume that everybody has other people in their lives, but for me that has not been the case for quite some time.

Because I spend a lot of time alone, I spend much time thinking about me or more specifically, what things about me I should change or work on. I also think about what few special relationships I have and those other relationships that showed promised but never really materialized. As a writer, spending time alone has helped me to finish one more chapter, write one more essay and do more research. I thank God that although I am alone and I sometimes feel lonely (there is a difference!), I am able to stay focused on Him and on those things He wants me to do.

No, solitude is not for everyone. If that is not your struggle, then praise God. I pray that you will cherish the relationships you have with family, friends and romantic partners that keep you from being by yourself. If you struggle with solitude, my prayer is that God will help you rise above its clutches.

For all of us Christian singles, we should do what we can to help our fellow singles make it through their times of solitude. All it may take is a short email or a quick call or a genuine hug of affection or a little card sent through the mail to let someone know that they are not really secluded and that you care.

Solitude is not for everyone, but being a genuine friend can be.