Signs of Life

You are so vague to me
Sometimes I think you're barely there at all
A quiet God who speaks between great intervals of silence

And if I still my thoughts for long enough
I might feel something
And be assured that you are there (for me)

But I am tired of summoning you up in my own mind
And giving you my faces and my words
I think I'll leave you to your own devices

And suddenly you're there
The moment that I look away
You appear

I wrote this a while ago, about three years I would say. I was so tired of God's silence, I wanted the supernatural. I wanted to HEAR him, I wanted some sign of life. He felt absent, I did not fully understand at the time that this was part of his 'character building'.

I think we are so often like that. We want to FEEL something, we want to have the concrete experience. But God is not like that, more often than not. I love this quote "God is subtle, but he is not malicious". Subtle He is, most often. His leading of us is almost imperceptible, thus His work is better viewed retrospectively. Once I understood this, my Christian experience became somewhat easier. I had to learn to surrender my longing for the dramatic, and look instead for God's subtleties in my life.

His fingerprints are everywhere...watch for the signs...