I'm sure I do the same thing a lot. I know that God so often speaks in riddles and mysteries (or so it seems to me) that when He says something to me, I'm always looking for the meaning behind the words. I almost never take Him literally.
I'm sure Martha wanted her brother to rise again. She surely wanted to believe that it could happen, and if anyone could do it, Jesus could. But how could she trust so much? Her heart was already broken by her brother's death. Could it stand to believing in a miracle that might not happen? What if she did believe and then it turned out that he was being figurative? I think she was testing the waters.
Her mouth spoke of the resurrection on the last day, but her heart cried out, "Prove me wrong! Tell me that's not what you meant! I want to believe!" I'm afraid I live entirely too much of my life afraid to believe in the possibility of the miraculous. It's not that I think God untrustworthy, it's more that I know He doesn't always work in the way I think He should, and I'm afraid of trusting that a miracle may occur when God's ways are so much higher than my own. I would know that whatever He chose to do was good and right and best, but maybe I'm afraid I would be trusting in the miracle, not the God of miracles.
I don't know if anyone still reads this blog; I've been pretty inconsistent. But if you have any thoughts on why we hesitate to believe God's literal word or why we are afraid to hope for the miraculous, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
2 comments:
FYI I am always checking your blog. I have read your latest posting several times now. You always bring up such good questions. We love you and miss seeing you.
Hey, I just found your blog through Facebook, so now you've got 2 readers. Haha.
One reason I'm sure we all have problems taking God's word at its face value is that we get used to not taking or not being able to take other people's words at face value. No matter how much we try and separate how we communicate with God with how we communicate with our fellow humans, one will always influence the other I'm sure.
Also, I personally find it very hard to discern that God is speaking one way or another on anything really. I'm not good with complex or subtle communication (being male and all) and since God obviously doesn't call me up on the cell and tell me what He is trying to say, its hard for me to see what that is most of the time. So I get used to trying to figure out what He is saying instead of hearing what He is saying, because frankly I just don't know how to listen very well. Haha.
I don't know, the whole situation is tough b/c its not the normal, easy to understand type of communication we are used to.
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