On Wednesday mornings our group contains a little girl named Olivia. She's probably about two years old - completely independent as far as walking, eating, etc., but still trying to get a grasp on the whole talking thing. She is a little chatterbox, but most of her conversations to us are a bit like "Anum furglum plluh ball anformen pu felum yay!!!" She has only mastered a few actual English words (as opposed to baby gibberish), but one of the words which she is VERY clear about is "scary". I discovered this a couple of weeks ago, when I was cleaning up graham cracker crumbs with the ever-intimidating... dun dun dun... VACUUM. And I'm not talking about the kind you plug into the wall that makes crazy "vroom" sounds and lights up and could potentially eat a small child. I'm talking about this bad boy right here:
This has no electric capacity whatsoever. It is operated completely on push power, and at the most, it makes a light scraping or rumbling sound as its brushes roll over the carpet. Not particularly terrifying in my estimation... but to Olivia, this may quite possibly be the world's scariest object. The moment we take this monster out of the closet, Olivia screams and runs up to the closest teacher, babbling a mile a minute in gibberish with the word SCARY stuck in there every few seconds in all caps. She won't stop freaking out until one of us picks her up, but the instant she is in someone's arms she goes dead quiet and is completely chill, though she still keeps a wary eye on the vacuum. It's the strangest thing; pull the vacuum out when she's on the ground by herself, and she immediately runs as far away as possible and panics until she considers herself to be at a safe distance. Once she's being held though, we can walk right up to the vacuum with her in our arms, and she doesn't even flinch. This really surprised me the first time I tried it; I figured that the closer I got to the vacuum with her in my arms, the tighter she would grip and the more she would freak out. I was amazed to find that she was just as comfortable next to the vacuum as she was across the room from it, as long I kept holding her. Try to set her down before the vacuum goes away though, and she latches on with a death grip and frantically babbles about the "scary".
The one thing I keep thinking about this experience is, this is how we should be with God. Whenever I am freaked out about something (and usually, the things I freak out about end up being about as insignificant as a "scary" push vacuum in the long run), there will come a moment when I run to God, and I will feel safe in His arms. When the scary situation approaches again or draws closer though, I instantly freak out again, forgetting that God is holding me through it. I want to reach that place where, like Olivia, I can relax no matter how close I am to my fears, knowing that God is holding me the entire time. It reminds me of a few lines of an old song...
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
Oh, what peace we often forfeit; oh, what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.
What peace we often forfeit... what needless pain we bear... simply because we refuse to trust that everything is under the control of the almighty, all knowing, all loving God. All because we do not run to Him, or stay in His arms, when frightening situations approach. In Isaiah 41:10, God exhorts us:
"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."
We should never have to fear, because we are being upheld, helped, and strengthened by the God of the universe. How often and how quickly we forget this truth! Speaking from personal experience though, I know that sometimes the reason that I don't run to God in scary situations is because I've strayed, or backslid, or just been distant from Him in the recent past. It's not like I think that He'll reject me, but (once again, projecting flawed human traits onto a perfect God), I always have this idea in the back of my mind that He'll pick me up, but be super grudging about it; or that He'll reluctantly help me only because He has to as my God. I hate feeling like I'm an obligation. I realized how silly that idea is this past week... Olivia was being a bit of a brat that morning, as all children do at some point or another. She wasn't listening to instructions, she kept running away when we told her to stay put, she would freak out and wriggle out of our grasp whenever we tried to pick her up to redirect her behavior. After snack time though, out came the vacuum, and up came a terrified Olivia, babbling for help and reaching out to us desperately. As I swung her up into my arms, I felt no grumpy obligation or contempt toward her; just a desire to calm and protect this frightened little girl - and perhaps just a hint of amusement that the big "scary" was only a harmless push vacuum. :) It made no difference that I had been incredibly frustrated with her behavior five minutes ago. She was scared, and I had an instinctive desire to soothe her fears. God is the same way with us. It doesn't matter how much we've messed up or how "bad" of people we are... regardless of our behavior, He is God, and His instinct and desire is to care for and protect and love us when we come to Him.
Moral of the story: Psalm 55:22. "Give your burdens to the Lord, and He will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall." Go to God with your fears, insecurities, and worries, regardless of how you feel. He will pick you up into His arms, maybe chuckle at you a little bit (but in a nice way), and hold you close, protecting you completely. Relax, because He's got this. Even if there's a vacuum in the room.
Too true. He wants us to bring more to Him, not less. He wants to be our everything and He can't be that if we don't bring our (constant) fears to him for him to sooth with his loving, embracing arms.
ReplyDeleteJoshua