BitterSweetLife

God Can Use Even You Me

The sky played a cruel trick on me this morning. I looked out the window and saw a grayish, cloudy soup that seemed to promise cooler temperatures and maybe rain—the ultimate air-refresher. But when I walked outside, the skies had cleared and a garish sun was hammering the asphalt. The last couple days have conspired against me to prove what a thin-skinned jerk I am—and today the streak would continue.

In the last 48 hours I’ve been hit twice in the head by thick tree branches and once I backed blindly into a solid wooden beam at mid-skull level. I’ve been nailed in the eye with spattered mud and I stubbed my toe on a concrete slab, striding forward at full speed. At dusk yesterday I was smacked in the side of the face with a basketball.

In each case I’ve responded with sentiments of which SCREW THIS! would be a mild expression. Which brings us back to this morning. Three sweltering, 100 degree days tacked monotonously end to end contribute to the feeling I have that God is trying to make a statement:

Look how little it takes to bring you to the end of your rope.

To which I reply bitterly, “Do you have a point?”

God smiles. And now you’re angry about me pointing this out. Do you have any right to be angry?

I shoot right back: “You better believe I do. I’ve been hit in the back of the head, bashed in the face, baked in the heat. You may as well finish me off now...”

At which point I realize my speech sounds eerily familiar. All right, God. All right. I may as well continue my streak of quoting Old Testament characters and drop a David line—“I am worm and not a man.” I can’t do anything right without embarrassingly massive doses of grace. Put me in a hot day, throw consecutive irritants at me, and I start blowing fuses—each one mere centimeters long. Pull out one slat and my self-sufficiency collapses. I’m a freaking loser.

About this time, God smiles again—infuriatingly.

At this moment, you’re just the man I’ve been looking for.