The End

Thoughts tumble in my mind. It seems to me like watching clothes dry in a machine with a glass front door. My thoughts are picked up on the bottom, carried to the top, and then, with a solid "thump", coming crashing back to the bottom. I imagine myself as a hamster in a glass cage. I run and run on the wheel, going nowhere. Once in a while, knowing beforehand that it will be hopeless, I go over to the glass wall peer out and scratch on it, just trying to reach for something different in my life.

I've determined that this will be the last entry in my blog. I grow tired and angry and I don't really feel disposed to share that, over and over, with anyone. Over two years ago, I just knew that God had called me. "Here I am.", I called back and did what I thought I was being asked to do. In the past two years, I've found God to be failing in many ways. There are darn few of "His" children, with whom I have any contact at all, that I care about identifying as my brothers and sisters. Those that I don't know, God seems to not know either.

Here, where we are mostly fed, clothed, warm, and dry: We want to go armed so we can kill. We drive as if we are more important than anyone else and the safety of others, even children in our own cars, can't be our concern. Politically, we try to legislate morality as we see it, telling women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies and telling others who they may and may not love. Financially, we seem to have an "I've got mine and I don't intend to share it." attitude. On Sunday morning, we attend a pep rally for God and then we leave the game to be played by "professional" Christians.

I've always felt that the example of management went a long way in establishing the demeanor of those being managed. If God doesn't care, why should we? Even if I agree that God doesn't cause bad things to happen, how can I deny that, with all of his power, He doesn't do anything to stop them either. Do you stop one child from touching a very hot stove and then allow another child to be badly burned? When a child dies, I don't want to hear that "God has a plan." or that "God must have needed another little angel." Using that logic, God must have a gracious plenty of young angels who have starved to death or been killed in wars.

I fear God. I fear His anger. I fear His indifference. I fear that I will never feel His arms around me. James writes that, if we draw closer to God, He will draw closer to us. The very best that I can do is to approach tentatively. I am not able to run enthusiastically to His arms no matter how much I long to do so.

And so now, I return to my hamster wheel where I'll continue to run and run and get nowhere. I am such a coward that I could never cause harm to myself. On the other hand, there are many times that I ask God for painless release from the tedium and weight of this life. How long must I run in this wheel, my God?