The God who is strong and near.

Oct 2008

I was frustrated.

I tell myself that my computer is an inanimate tool. It is not malicious. It is not trying to frustrate me, or suck up my time by throwing me glitches – and it is not deliberately preventing me from sending an email update to our adoption and orphan advocacy Sunday school class. I wanted to send the mailing this morning, since it includes information about a time-sensitive petition that could help thousands of adoptive parents and the children they wait for. First, drafts disappeared mysteriously as I wrote them. Then the mailing kept grinding in the outbox and wouldn't leave. Then it cheerfully informed me it sent successfully, but erased the whole address list in the process. I re-typed it over and over. Tried forwarding it to one friend, asking her to pass it on, but chunks of the text vanished. I confess that my prayer at that point was frustrated and perhaps even self-righteously demanding.

Meanwhile, the back of my mind vaguely registered that the day, which had dawned sunny, was darkening. Then I heard wind. I looked outside to see leaves dropping like rain, then stepped onto the deck to the sound of wind rustling in trees. How does one describe that sound for readers who don't live near forests? Perhaps like an ocean surf at certain times, or an army riding full-speed on horseback, heard approaching through an ear on the ground. It is a sound of restrained, but enormous, power. I lifted my face to the feel of cold air pushing out the summer. Occasional spits of rain hit my cheeks. The leaves looked as if they were coming straight out of the gray sky, dark shapes when high overhead, then pouring down, careening and dancing until they landed to cover the grass with a gold and brown carpet. Creative power surged around me. Beautiful. Untamed. I felt, just a little bit, in the presence of a fearsome and wonderful God.

I needed that right then. It reminded me that God is God, infinitely wise and powerful and good, a reminder that drove my computer frustrations away from the center of my attention.

Job had a lot more trouble than computer malfunctions. And when he poured out his complaint to God, God responded with a display of his power in creation. He spoke to Job out of a storm and asked him a string of image-packed questions:

“Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?” “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep?” “Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?”

And then:

“Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you watch when the doe bears her fawn? Do you count the months till they bear? Do you know the time they give birth?”

I have not an inkling how my scrambled computer works. Much less can I fathom the workings of the wind and falling leaves around me. But the God of the vast and powerful creation is the God who watches over the birth of fawns on remote mountainsides. How much more must he see and care about the tears of orphans, hidden away where I cannot see them.

God makes wind and rain. And he watches tirelessly over the weak creatures throughout all of his creation.

He is strong, and He is near. I bow my head in adoration.

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