The Divine Crash

Today I arrived at seminary and after my first class I turned on my laptop and was preparing to check my email and start researching a paper on Isaiah 61.  However, to my surprise the internet wasn’t working.

I knew it wasn’t my computer.  I am running a brand new top of the line Apple Mac Book Pro. I love this computer and it does everything I need it to do and more.  Besides that I have used computers on a regular basis since I was in the 3rd grade and my dad brought one home from work.  I went to technical school for computer repair.  I have held jobs in computer maintenance and while in high school I even had my own business fixing other people’s computers.

So I knew it wasn’t my computer because I am the master of all computers and they bow before me!  The problem with the internet connection must have been on the other end with the seminary.  Surely they would be to blame because they are not as smart as me when it comes to computers.  Right?

I figured before I went to complain that the seminary’s internet was malfunctioning and keeping me from my email I would check a few things and be well-armed with information.

Sure enough it was not the seminary’s internet it was my computer.  One setting was wrong and that made my internet stop working. It was not the very expensive server system that had broken but my computer that was malfunctioning because I had changed that setting the other day to make it run faster at home, not knowing it wouldn’t work at school.

How arrogant I was to think that a seminary that spends thousands of dollars and has a full-time staff to make sure their internet and network is working would be broken when in reality it was one computer.

Yet, how often do people do that? How often do things stop working and we immediately think that it can’t be me, someone else must be to blame.  It can’t be me it must be the tools or the car or the computer.

How often do we do this to God?  We feel distant or we feel alone and we begin to blame God?  We curse at God and scream out “Why have You left me?” How arrogant are we to assume God left us? What if God is in the exact same place and it is us who moved?

When times become hard maybe God did move away and maybe God is letting trials happen to build character OR maybe those times we feel distant and that God has left us are actually because we left God? Because we decided to try things on our own and that is exactly what is happening.

Think about it like this:  I have a son, I love my son so much and I take care of him but if one day he decides he knows better than me and wants to go out on his own and while he was out he ended up in a bad situation doing things he regretted and didn’t even have enough to eat, whose fault is that? Is it mine or is it his?

It wouldn’t be mine because if I hadn’t let him go he would have resented me forever but because he made his choices and he moved away it becomes his fault.

However, because I love my son, he can always come back to me.  If that were my son I would be waiting by the window for him to come back and I would watch and wait for him every day and if I ever saw him coming back I would run out and grab him and before he could say anything I would wrap my arms around him and hug him and throw him a huge party with the finest foods.

This story isn’t about myself or my son it is about us and God. Check out Luke 15:11ff.

When we have wandered far from God and have done things we regret we can curse God but it is not God’s fault if he had stopped us we would have resented him.  Instead we can come back and when we do we find that God was waiting for us and runs to us (God runs to us at full force with open arms) and he gives us a party.