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Dear God, I Have a Few Complaints

Dear God, I have a few complaints.

Don’t get me wrong – I like You. I believe in You. Generally speaking, I think You’re doing a decent job at this whole “being the God of the universe” gig.

But still, there are a few things that I really just don’t get.

First – Advent.

Advent is a terrible idea, in my opinion.

In a world so full of darkness and pain and heartbreak, it IS nice to have a month designated for lament, for waiting, for longing. This much is true. But maybe if You dialed back the darkness and pain and heartbreak just a little bit, we wouldn’t need Advent quite so much.  Has this ever occurred to You?

This Advent has been particularly brutal. It feels as if it started rising around Easter this year and has just been crashing over us ever since  – a wave of pain, injustice, destruction, heartbreak, loneliness, death, despair.

It’s been Advent for far too long and still we’re praying “How long oh Lord?”

You do know that “How long, oh Lord?” is NOT a rhetorical question, right?

I know that the good book says: “A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to,”  but from where I stand it seems like You’ve been late more than a few times.

Remember that story in the Gospel of John, when Your friend Lazurus was dying and You could have saved him and You just let him die instead? What the hell, God?

I know you resurrected him after that, and it makes for a really good story, but that’s some pretty intense grief you put his family through just to make a point about resurrection and stuff.

(I know You didn’t ask for my opinion, but then You DID go and make me a blogger, so…)

While we’re on the topic of resurrection, has it ever occurred to You that there might be some conflict of interest when you bill yourself as both “The Great Physician” and “The God of Resurrection”? I know that without death there can be no resurrection, but if You were doing the whole Great Physician thing just a little bit better maybe there wouldn’t need to be so much death?

People tell me all the time that You will be with me in the pain, even if You won’t take the pain away. I know this is true. I’ve felt You nearby in the middle if the night when my chest was on fire and I didn’t know if I could take another breath.

And I know it’s not my job to tell You how to do Yours, but it seems to me that if  You would go to all the trouble of being with me in the pain, You could just as easily take away the pain. Right?

As I said earlier, I believe You can do all things. Really. To be honest, this just makes it all the more confusing and frustrating that You would choose pain as the path of transformation, heartbreak as the path of love, death as the path of life.

Have You ever felt pain, God? have You ever had Your heart broken? have You ever died?

It sucks. A lot.

(You probably already knew that.)

Love,

Micah

[ image: Rob Gross ]

published December 16, 2014

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