Captured: Chasing Bubbles

The more I travel along with God, the more I realize that I don’t know much. I spend much of my day questioning God about my order and place in his plan, about his will and about life here on Earth. The answers I receive always end up conflicted, bringing about even more questions! It frustrates me. The only things that I know as absolute truth are:

1. God is Good.
2. God is sovereign, merciful and gracious.
3. Jesus saved me through a gift of salvation that I accepted.
4. God loves me.
5. God wants relationship with me.

That’s about it. There are certainly others, but this little list is what comes to mind as I sit here writing. It’s simple. But, there is SO much more I want to understand and know, and being the impatient gal that I am, I tend to want to know everything immediately.

Today, I went to two church services, because I like them both, and I watched another one on-line. Ironically, in one way or another, all three pastors touched on the same message with differing interpretations. UGH!! I suppose that is to be expected since we are all human and we come from different backgrounds and experiential filters that we all use in relating to God and each other.

However, as I sat on my balcony afterwards, pondering the sermons and asking God what in the world I was supposed to believe, God whispered a little something to me about my confusion, relieving me of my frustration. He reminded me that my questions were good and they were exactly what he expected and desired of me because that is how he made me… to question. From the first breath into Adam, humans have had questions for God. We are his children and that’s what children do. Any parent knows that one of the first words children use, besides ‘me’ and ‘mine’, is ‘Why??’ We draw close to our parents in our questioning… we NEED them for their answers. And that’s precisely why God made each of us to question… because he wants us near. He misses us when we are apart from him, just like I miss my loved ones when they are not in my presence.

I’ll be honest. I’m sure that if I had all the answers, I wouldn’t need God so much. I wouldn’t seek him out the way I do and our relationship would suffer because of that. Sure, I might spend time praising God for how amazing he is … but I don’t think I’d spend as much time with God if it weren’t for all the questions. I just know I wouldn’t… and, of course, God knows that as well. So, I realize that God places these questions in us to encourage relationship with him. And it certainly works in my case because I love to ponder the what-ifs, the what-abouts and the could-it-bes.

The picture above is one that I took this summer of my best friend’s grandson. I just love the look in little James’ beautiful eyes. At first glance, it looks like he is reaching for the heavens. However, what you can’t see in the picture is that James is reaching for a bubble that his mother has just blown from one of those little bottles of soap with the little round blowing apparatuses. Do you remember the magic of blown bubbles as a child? And as a mom, I loved it almost as much blowing the bubbles for my own kids and watching them chase after them.

I’ll confess that I still think bubbles are pretty magical!! As I look at the picture, I see myself as a little child, chasing after bubbles … completely mesmerized by them and wanting my mother to blow more around me … so I could chase them… and maybe even catch one …

… much like the questions that I keep chasing in my mind… hoping to ‘catch one’ and have a definitive answer.

As the ‘bubbles’ blow about on the wind of my mind, most of them just ‘pop’ as I reach out to grasp them … unanswered. And then once again, my heavenly Father blows more of these ‘bubbles’ for me to chase. And I like it … and I know he loves it too … because He and I are playing, spending time together and his little girl is completely engaged…  mesmerized by the possibility of catching one of those bubbles …

… just once.

I know most of most of my questions won’t be answered this side of Heaven’s Gate.

And that’s OK…

… Because I really love to chase bubbles with my Father in Heaven!