Relationship Check...

I've promised to talk about relationships today. But, I think God wants to have a DTR with all of us.

Jeremiah 18.6 compares our relationship with God to a potter and his clay. Not very flattering, at least on the surface. I mean, who wants to be at someone else's whim so close to taking final shape when "WHACK!", the potter's fist comes crashing down on them, only to drag them, against gravity and their own will, back through the same long process they went through before the whack?! That's whack!!!

I used to think - "That's ridiculous, God just gets to mush me and start over anytime he wants?" But, this failed to take into account the critical element of any relationship - trust. "Who does God think He is, some kind of ... oh, yeah. My bad. God." Trusting God is such a scary thing, even as a "mature" Christian - He never promised a safe flight, only a safe landing, as the saying goes. But, trusting that He is smarter, wiser, and more amazing than the cliffs, glaciers, rapids, redwoods, barred galaxies, spiral nebulae that He came up with in the first place, provides a little perspective. Does He have a greater eye for detail? Would He really scrap us as a project if our impurities, bubbles, and lumps were being incooperative with His potter's wheel and touch?

It was relayed to me that while being publicly ridiculed in front of hundreds of his peers before an election in which he was a candidate, Charles Stanley said not a word in his own defense. When asked why his demeanor was undaunted, and I love his response, he said

"If I win, I win. If I lose, I win. My responsibility is to obey God and trust Him with the outcomes."

Is that possible? Could you trust someone, even a God you can't see, to care enough to break you down and build you back into something He sees as perfect? Or, do you place your trust fully in the premise that a finite person like you or I could come up with a better, more perfect final destination? If adversity builds character, can you take the adversity, despite your own ability to measure the return on investment? Yet, without knowing their grand vision for the universe, we hopped up on the schoolbus at age 4 or 5 and trusted a public school bus driver to navigate a 30 foot metal and glass cage to school safely for 180 days a year...

How about you? Could you trust the God who spoke the universe into being to manage the mundane details of your life, provided you did (or in many cases did not) do your part?