Letters to God

I am standing out here in the storm, screaming. I’m screaming at you, God. I’m screaming for you. What do I need to do to get your attention? If you want me to believe, then be here. Show up. People are starving – for sincere community, for meaning in tragedy, for shelter in chaos, for love amidst hate. What am I supposed to do about this mess of a world we live in? The brokenness and suffering is immeasurable. If you are, then be. Here. With us. Be here, not in corporate songs we sing, but in the trenches of our darkest nightmares. Be here, until your warmth seeps into our veins and frees our hearts from all the pain and all the doubt and all the insecurities and all the unworthiness.

Despite all my best efforts to ignore you, to rebel, to push you away, to scream profanities when no other words seem to express my despair adequately enough, and to annihilate your very existence in my mind – despite all this, I cannot help but see you in the seemingly minute details of the world around me:

In the sun when it rises on the horizon;
In the wind as it sweeps through the trees and cools my face;
In the beauty of foreign landscapes;
In the last bit of light before nightfall;
In the still of evening when an owl swoops overhead and perches on the branches above, looking down at me with wide, almost understanding eyes.

In those brief moments, I want to believe that you're present; and that somehow, everything will be okay.