God doesn’t care

After years of therapy, prayer, and hard work, I realized I was still holding onto lies about God. These lies may have been designed to protect me — as you shall see — but, each needed to be identified and dismantled. Identifying them was not so hard; dismantling each was.

The first lie about God that I took on was the belief that God didn’t care. This protected me, I thought, because it kept me from allowing God too close. After all, if parents betray, who’s to say God would not be the same way? As children, we learn who God is, first and foremost, from our first caretakers. This can be a problem when those first caretakers are inconsistent, absent, and abusive.

This lie was sometimes confined to me — God didn’t care about me, there being something drastically wrong with me. It sometimes generalized itself to the whole world — God didn’t care about any of us. This lie was reinforced when a boat full of migrants went down in the Atlantic, or when the Boka Haram kidnapped hundreds of young girls to use them in trafficking.

How was I to turn this thinking, this fear, around? I didn’t know, but God certainly did. First, I recognized why part of me wanted to believe it. After all, it would save me from the hazard of opening myself to God only to find the fear confirmed. I would reach out, and God would be silent.

Sitting alone one afternoon, I turned to my Bible. I opened it to Psalm 18 and read these words…

“They attacked me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord came to my support.” (Psalm 18:19)

As I read these words, I could feel a resonance deep within me. I knew, somehow, they were true, and God would show me how if I simply kept listening, if I simply remained open to Him. In that moment, my mind was filled with assurance. It was filled with a knowing that I was where I was on this day, as strong and stable as I was, because of Him, because of His intervention, His support. Perhaps I hadn’t been aware of how that support came at that time, but it had come nonetheless. And, if I stuck around, He would show me.

God did care. God does care. Deeply. If we stick around, He’ll show us.

Reflection

Can you agree to watch and wait on God? Can you agree to turn ‘round and look with Him at your past and see ways He did indeed intervene to strengthen you?

Notice Psalm 18 does not imply God takes the calamity away, but it does insist God supports us in that day.

Prayer

Oh, God, I, too, want to think You don’t care. It’s just easier that way. I can keep You at a distance then. I don’t have to risk trying to hear You, see You, follow You. But, I’m already here, under the Juniper. May I stay here, not with my eyes shut tight. May I stay here and be willing to watch and wait, intently. Amen.