I turned 55 a couple weeks ago. I like this birthday. I call it the "Double Nickel."
Life has all kinds of milestones, though I'm not sure the real pivotal points in life are at those mile markers. Pivotal points, the spots in the road where the road makes sharp turns, occur more randomly – okay, according to God's design, but they sure feel random. The problem with the "designed by God" part is that then you have to decide what to do with how you feel about those events, especially the ones overflowing with trauma and pain. Maybe the pain, too, is part of God's design. But then what do you do with the pain itself – and the incommunicable feelings that come with it? If God intended the pain, are we just supposed to accept it? Do we even have an option?
Some people think you're supposed to just stuff it, your feelings. But as someone once said, manure poops out one way or another. (Okay, he didn't use the word "manure.") It is true, though, you can't just stuff feelings. And you don't even just hand them over – they are part of who you are. What you do is channel them in the right direction – instead of bashing in some wall plaster, you get involved with helping hurting people.
I figure I've been channeling feelings into causes and mission and action for a long time. Now I'm learning that channeling is not enough. What I have to do is consciously link the pain with that action, identify one with the other. I'm angry, I'm hurt, so therefore I'm going to apply healing to someone else's hurt and anger. It is as if the pain in me becomes balm for someone else and in the process, we both get better.
Does God feel pain? Does He even feel? Scripture paints Yahweh (one of the Judeo-Christian names for God) as a God who both feels and expresses emotions. So in the same way that I believe that we have intellect because we were designed by intellect (what some people call intelligent design, though I speak to ultimate cause more than to methodology here), I also believe we have feelings and emotions because we were designed by One who feels and emotes. God doesn't just have love, Scripture says – He is love.
It's a good thing. That God feels. I don't think I could handle a God who doesn't feel my pain, whose heart doesn't break when a child is bought for sex or a man beats up his wife or when a cop pulls someone over just for being black or brown. I can handle a God who punishes the wicked, however He deems it wise to do so. But I don't think I could handle a God who punished at whim (not that I'd have any say in it). I don't even think I could handle a God who condemned people to damnation and didn't provide a way of escape from that fate. People are far too complicated – who that is good hasn't done something very wrong and who that is evil hasn't done some very good things? God better be a good judge of character. Actually He also turns out to be a lavish dispenser of grace.
Some people make a distinction between a supposedly angry God of the Old Testament and a loving Jesus of the New. But I see a God who loves some extremely disobedient people in the Old and a Jesus who gets angry at hypocrisy and injustice in the New. And besides, the Jews who have only the Old Testament for their Scriptures also understand a God who lavishes love indiscriminately as well as a God who rains down wrath on hypocrisy and injustice. As the New Testament Jesus says, he and his Father (God in heaven) are One.
So at this milestone of a birthday, what do I do with God? That for me is the easy part. I choose all over again to love God with my whole being. There aren't any better alternatives anyway, are there? And what do I do with life? I choose to obey God, which I understand from Micah 6:8 is to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with my God who has called me to love my neighbor as I love myself (that's from Leviticus 19:18).
Even though I'm 55, I don't have to have all the answers. And I really don't like it when people smugly think they do and don't even bother to ask what the questions are. As Evangelist Tom Skinner wrote in the '70s, "If Christ is the answer, what are the questions?" I hate it when people don't take time to listen, ponder questions and savor the process of finding answers that don't always add up in our finite brains.
I figure God doesn't need me to have all the answers either as He already has them. He just wants me to love people so they can discover Him and find healing for their pain. I'm also beginning to discover that even in just asking questions, I can help people find healing – especially when I give voice to their own questions, questions others don't want them asking, but questions that open vents in their pain and allow God's Hgood stuff to flow in.
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