Thursday, March 24, 2011

Unveiling

I have spent the last few days wrestling with my view of God's goodness in my life. My thoughts on this matter are far from complete but I have seen these shimmering glimpses of His grace and love. I need to preface my thoughts with where I am at in this season of my life. Since August, I have been working at a group home for at risk teenagers. I don't really want to get into all the logistic and comings and goings of the program but more that everyday I have the opportunity, although sometimes I choose to view it as a burden, to meet young men and women where they are at in the midst of their life struggles.

I think frustrations and disappointment are an everyday battle when working with this demographic, but if I were to believe that these were the only characteristics of this job I would be only believing a lie. I tend to view a lot of the broken areas in life as problems to be fixed. I lean towards this easily, I am an engineer. For six and a half years I was sitting in class rooms and laboratories thinking of ways to solve problems. Its hard to have that mindset and work with people. I, personally, look at most of the attitudes, language, structure and etc. around my place of work and see flawed and broken practices and people. I have to step back and realize that I can't solve or fix everything even if I wanted to. This frustrates me so much sometimes.

Now, back to God's goodness in my life (this may take a while to materialize I am still processing as I type). I recently have had a few conversations with some of the teens that I work with. They are usually along the lines of why don't you do anything when we do this. The doing part almost always pertains to an activity which is expected for them to complete. I find myself building up with an overwhelming view of ungratefulness on apart of their immaturity. I know that my primary, even if it is an undertone, duty is to serve. Even if my heart is not in the right place at any given time throughout the day the subject matter that is being held highest is the care of these teens.

With that being said, I find myself doing the same if not worse to God. I could go on and on about how he serves me in every aspect of my life. As it says in Psalm 23, "The LORD is my Shepard, I shall not be in want." I shall not be in want. This has baffled me. I have a friend who has constantly reminded me of the intelligence of sheep. They are stupid. A Shepard is constantly tending to and guiding these crazy guys. To say that I will never be in want is a crazy statement to grasp.

Along with that, the other night I was hit with a truth that was so profound for me that I was constantly fighting with myself over how hard it is to clearly see(I only say this because I usually blur this myself) all what Christ has done in my life. I found myself in a situation where I placed face to face with what grace is. There was something that needed to be done and I was content at letting a teen reap the consequences for what he had sowed. But sitting there, God spoke to me and pointed out that his love overcomes all of that. Christ came to serve the broken and undeserving. I didn't deserve anything and yet he died for me? How am I supposed to understand that? And its free? This is grace. Pure and simple. As I stood there completing this simple and small task my insides were rocked. My flesh was fighting so hard that I was mad and at the same time at peace. I was torn by my view of justice and grace. I was shown or at least given a glimpse of God's grace and love.

I just thought that I needed to get out some of these thoughts.

2 comments:

Janette said...

Brent, I enjoyed reading this post. You have a gift for writing which I never thought you would have.
We can never control everything in our lives and sometimes just releasing it to God gives peace like nothing else ever could.
I love you Brent

JLotz said...

Great post. You do great work. Love you, dawg.