Last Exit Before Oblivion

Trusting God seems to be a big deal for lots of people. This is kind of surprising when you consider that God made the world we live on, so providing the means to live for a few billion people shouldn't be much of a challenge.

I think there are a couple of big reasons why I have a hard time trusting Him. One is that trusting people provides a very bad model. "I'll always be here for you," they say, until you actually do need them and then it's "Um, sorry, I have a prior commitment." God comes along and says "Trust Me," and I, in the grip of memory, say "Yeah, right."

The other big reason is that many commonly repeated stories about God reinforce the idea that He has His own agenda, which probably won't include anything I'm interested in. Why should I give my already ruined life to Jesus when he seems to have ruined so many others? They have a hard time paying their bills, they get hung out there on the edge, life is never comfortable. I'll settle for comfort, thank you, having had about as much challenge as I want. Those followers of Jesus who are gung-ho for some hair-raising adventure can just leave me behind.

It could be, however, that there's another way to look at this. Instead of seeing God's demands and my shortcomings compared to the future, maybe I should concentrate on God's forgiveness in the present. He knows who I am, to the last little detail. He knows I'm impatient, ungraceful, reticent, a loner. He knows I'm not the first person you'd choose to represent the Model Follower Of Jesus 2007. I'll never be on the cover of "Christianity Today," which might just be a good thing.

There are reasons why I'm a sand sculptor. I don't have to ask anyone's permission. The materials are free, and the result is immovable and temporary. No records other than the abstraction of a photograph. These days even the photograph isn't real, being just a collection of ordered binary numbers on a computer hard disk. I ask nothing from the world except to be left alone, and sand sculpture is the medium of expression that suits my trackless vagabond ways.

I live as a homeless person. I've feared the future even while not believing in it; I could die tomorrow. I never thought I'd live to be 54 but my one-day-at-a-time steps have resulted in an impossible accumulation of years.

Along the way I've accumulated experience, too. It's odd experience, but there are times when what I know exactly fits someone else's need. I have the occasional chat with people, or the occasional Blog post that hits the spot for one or two others. Perhaps God never intended me to be mass-market.

So, I can thrash around and assume God is going to make me mass-market, or I can continue the pattern of a lifetime and drift in His hands. The overall assumption is that no matter where I end up God knows what he's doing, and knows who I am. The chances are his fearless guidance will be much better than my cowering behind a rock, expecting to die.