Shaken awake from a terrible dream, we no longer feel comfortable gracing the perspiration-laden sheets of our bed. As we move slowly toward the toilet we can’t help but think, “Why such a nasty dream...” until we realise this weight that hangs over us is still there. Oh no, it starts again... the mind cranks through those horrible thoughts one after the other, over and again.
I remember such times when sleep was the perfect—albeit temporary—answer, locking me safely away from the world that seemed after me.
When life becomes scary via our circumstances—those that ‘snap’ and turn on us—we can get the refuge we need right there in a God custom-designed to our very need. God, here, is compassionate and a soft cushion as we clamour for meaning to it all, and especially when we’re most numb to finding meaning (when we cannot do it). A God we have for every occasion.
It is here we find God in friend, never distant to the lonely and fearful heart.
Through the hours that tick by slowly, those minutes we feel hardly alive—minutes that seem to hang eternally on our clocks—God’s there, even if we don’t feel the Presence of this Mediator of our souls. God is connecting with us in our fear and lonely desolation as much akin to anyone or anything. The God of the cross is not estranged to betrayal, aloneness and abject fear, to every last emotion.
Indeed, this maybe where God is best found.
In the madness of our personal insanity—that which we hide from the world, but we can’t hide from God—a sweet, numbing sense of being held is felt through us.
We all need to be held from time to time.
Surrendering to the prompting of the Spirit is crucial, for God is gentler than we imagine, never there to force upon us something beyond our own will. God is waiting for us to ask him in.
In our need, God is there.
© 2010 S. J. Wickham.
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