Separating God from the Man

I originally planned on writing this as an email, but considering the multitude of overbearing, annoying emails I have sent, I felt that this would just get scrapped amongst the rest of the rambling. And I don’t want it scrapped. And, I want it read by others… not for sympathy (or smacks upside the head), but because I think it’s important that we be cautious in how we see those special mentors of ours…

Every day I struggle. Every day there is some concern or worry or fear that eats away at me. For a short time, I found relief from that…. and, periodically since that short time.  One person – the one whom would have received this email – has been here for me through some very tough times. I have often credited him on essentially saving me a year or two ago. And since then. I write about him fairly often in blog posts just because of what a huge impact he had on me and especially on my reunion with Christ.

Tonight, I posted a blog post about being at the end of one’s rope. At the end of that post, I wrote, “Yes, the times I let go, I had friends and mentors who caught me. These people were God's hands at work.” I reread that line several times. I delete it and tried to rewrite it. I mulled it over in my brain. I tried to mold it into meaning something different. I even removed the line all together. Something about it just really bothered me.

The motto of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is “God’s Work, Our Hands.” That’s been what the letter board outside my church has said for quite some time. I’ve even incorporated this phrase into some of my posts. God truly does use us to do His work. I know this. I recognize this. I have admitted to this on many occasions.

But, what happens when we forget that it’s God’s work? What happens when we start to think of the hands as not of God? We only see the hands of the man without recognizing the impact God had on those hands. We start to expect those hands to continue working for us and with us even though God already has other plans.  We take God out of the equation but still expect the work of God.

And, by removing God from the equation, we end up resenting both God and the human hands that had been used. We end up with a lot of anger, and pain, and craziness, and feelings of betrayal. We end up sitting in a dark room, alone, rereading one hastily typed line of truth, and trying to twist it so we don’t have to face the truth.