Believe

The question we have to ask in each of our lives, then, is the question we ask so frequently about Saul's: 

At what point do we believe God? 

What does He have to do that would be enough for us to understand just how much He loves us? 

The tragedy is that so many us, if we were to read our life stories back the way that we get to read Saul's, would be screaming at ourselves. We'd be screaming at multiple junctions. We'd be wanting to jump through the pages of the story, grab ourselves by the neck, and shake us. Look at what God has done. How can you not believe Him yet?

Sometimes, it's the big things. The big, obvious things - like the oil that was running down Saul's head and dripping onto his face. How do you not believe a moment like that? But then, how do you not believe a moment when your money stretches just far enough, when the medicine works, when the apology restores, when the door opens? Here we are, not believing it. Continuing, hilariously, to pray for the very sorts of things God has already given us and we have not believed. 

Sometimes, it's the little things. The small, almost-imperceptible things that fly right under our radar. Like someone offering us the little bit we need to find our courage, or someone writing off the expectation entirely and offering us a free gift. 

How many things in your life have you received unexpectedly, freely-given, at just a moment when you needed them? How many quarters have you found on the sidewalk? How many exceptional clearance deals? How many well-timed sales? How many perfect books for the perfect season in the little free library? 

How many little graces? 

My guess is that if we would go back and read our own stories the way that we read the stories of others like Saul, we would find so many of the same patterns that frustrate us when we see them in others. We would see our own propensity to miss the signals and the cues and the blessings and the graces and the gifts entirely. 

It may not be true in the most concrete sense of the words, but I'm betting there are a great many of us who have been found, more than once, hiding among the luggage even while our head still shimmers in the sun from the oil that has just never quite washed out all the way, no matter how many showers we've had since then. 

And that, my friends, is also a tragedy. 

So the question for us is the same question we have for Saul: at what point do you simply believe what God is doing in your life and start living like it's true? 

May the answer be as we know that it is: at any point. 

How about now?