Laughably Frustrating
Have you ever had
one of those days where you stepped outside and wondered what the weather was
thinking? It’s somewhere between sunny
and raining and you’re not sure whether it’s misting or spitting. Or it’s between raining and snowing and
you’re not sure whether to call it hailing, sleeting, or slushing? Sometimes I’m not sure there is even a word
to describe the weather outside of “temperamental”!? That’s exactly where the
single twenties stage of life is outside of education.
Right there.
Right where you
don’t know quite what to call it and what it wants to be. It’s no man’s land. Right where you react by smirking and shaking
your head or by getting just plain upset at the weather for not making up its
mind.
Stuck Alone in the Unknown
School gives you
direction and a social life but what do you do once you’re out? Culture says family and a good job answer
this question. They will fix those
feelings of alone and the unknown. They
are security.
But what if I
don’t want to move back home or get married? And what if I can’t get a job or
my current job definitely doesn’t make me feel more secure about enjoying life
and my future success? Does that make
me stubborn and selfish? Does that make
me completely alone and lost? No.
But these
questions do leave a lot of people feeling lost and confused. It leaves a group feeling alone like the
invisible minority displaced in the confusing unknown shadows of mainstream…
God is a God of the Alone
Sometimes
you need to get alone to realize that you’re not alone. It sounds funny but humanity can be lonely
without God. We can have people all
around us and still feel like we have nowhere to turn. Elijah is being chased after an epic stand
for the Lord and complains, “I am the only one left, and now they are trying to
kill me too” (1 Kings 19:10). God’s
reply is just as epic, ““Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of
the LORD… I reserve seven thousand in
Israel” (1 Kings 19:11,18). Seven
Thousand Others! And Elijah thought he
was the only one. Elijah had to go to
the mountain so that his lonely soul could hear the Lord whisper what he
couldn’t feel or see, “You are not alone.”
You are not alone
in the unknown.
-none
of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone-
Rom 14:7
