Keep your eyes on Jesus

Do you have to understand God, or understand much of anything in order to worship Him?

Do the events of life have to make sense in order to follow Him?

Did He reveal His love to you at one point, knowing that in the future you would come across a seeming contradiction and turn away?

Did He know you'd encounter someone whose doubts would become your own?

Are the times of aloneness when you don't "feel" God's love signs that He doesn't love you anymore?

These types of questions seem to be the struggles and battleground of faith.

It is much easier to believe when things are going our way.

What if God knows fully and loves fully?  He says He does.  Can I believe that when going through struggles?

The spiritual journey can be like learning to ride a bike.  We like the training wheels of security.  We like to think God is holding on to the back of the bike all the way down the street.  In reality He takes off the training wheels, gives us a push and off we go.  It is exhilarating at first until the bike starts to wobble, or we fall down.

Yes, the analogy breaks down because God is with us even when it may feel like He isn't.

But this is where faith comes in.  Trusting when you can't see.  Holding on in the dark to what you believed in the light.

I've been talking with quite a few people who are being shaken (myself included).  Aurora Theater Shootings, Boston Marathon Bombings, Texas Plant Explosion, Hurricane Sandy, Oklahoma Tornadoes, Death of loved ones, etc.

I don't have a lot of answers.  

I do know that every time we ask Him to hear us He does.  

I do know every time we invite Him to be with us in suffering He brings comfort.  

I do know peace fills our minds when we give up our right to understand everything.

I do know when His kingdom comes, wrongs are set right.

And I'm learning the contradictions and paradoxes are part of the fog of this life, the smoke rising from skirmishes between good and evil.

My dad would have reminded me "Sure its tough.  But in terms of what you're going through-- a little smoke never hurt anybody.  Keep your eyes on Jesus."