Stream of Consciousness

I found this on my computer and thought I would share it.

An Interacting God
Sometimes I wish God interacted with us like he did in Isaiah’s day. God was to be feared and his actions were known to be his actions. Now it seems that everything is so ambiguous. “Is God doing this or is this just happening?” is a question I have asked myself often. If only God would show himself as he did with the prophets of Baal and Elijah. No one would doubt, no one would question but we would be loyal followers to a God who supernaturally interacted with his creation.
Sometimes I understand the reasons why the Jews created idols, and I do today. The almost impossible task of having a relationship with something that is not physical is strange; a relationship with the invisible seems to go against every human notion. To be distanced from touch and sound of our creator is empty sometimes. God speak and speak loudly. What holds you back, is it my faith, my lack of trust, my rebellious heart?
Sin is the exact distance between me and my creator. Sin is a manifestation of a rebellion that has been going on since the beginning of time. Sin is developed in a person when he forgets to trust in the invisible and trusts in the visible, the unreachable for the reachable. Sin is developed in my heart when I welcome the idols of the flesh into my home.
What is this all about? I cannot stand it; the feeling of regret and distance that one feels when sin is chosen over the creator is almost unbearable. But what can I do, can I renounce my rebellious ways and look forward to Jesus; to the perfect. No my life is sin; the fact that I live is sin. I have been broken from the day I was born. Born to a broken and imperfect family that has someway or another broken and unperfected me.
Does this mean it is their entire fault that I sin? Well yes and no. Created life now equals sin. I have no ability to become perfect because of the fact that this world is imperfect. But I cannot allow myself to be corrupted of this notion that people are perfect, let me explain.
I have been taught from a young, whether audibly or otherwise, that my parents are perfect. Everything was hidden from me, the dismantling of everything I knew to be stable came as a surprise. A divorce happened right under my nose and I couldn’t smell a thing. I use to think this was the correct way of dealing with things. “Hide all from your children; let them believe that you are perfect,” is what I would think. This way of thinking did not work well with me and my experience in my family. I never knew a thing about my parents having troubles and contemplating divorce, I never knew that they perhaps I would be eating TV dinners with my single dad in a two bedroom apartment. I believed, as every ignorant person would, that I had been a part of a perfect American family. The definition of a perfect American family has since been redefined but at the time it meant that my family was together. Now I believe the definition is, if you have enough money to keep up with the times, is your house bigger than you can handle, and do you drive a car that gets 3 miles to the gallon. But at one point I believed that my family was perfect. Little did I know?
Of course I have become more cynical than I was as a child. Now I believe, I would never say this out loud, that the perfect American family does not fight and gets along in every manner. This is unattainable and just inconsistent with my understanding of humanity. I have believed for some time that perfect life is perfect life; basically that two being opposites, male and female, would complement each other perfectly. Like a human jigsaw puzzle, I would be missing that middle piece that just connected the whole picture together. My counterpart, I believed at least, would be able to be fit perfectly into that slot. Instead the picture is realistically the same but that space in my puzzle has gotten banged up and ripped so now the puzzle piece of my partner has to be forced into the space or doesn’t fit properly. I remember days of being young and trying to force that one piece, that most obviously had no reason being in a particular spot, trying to make it fit in anyway I could. This is my reality with relationships today.
The nice thing about relationships though, is that through them you can began to repair those corroded edges, a process called sanctification or being made into the image of Christ. Through correct relationships I am banged and bruised and broken but I come back looking different. I remember when I broke my knee cap, darn did it hurt. But when you break your bones they grow back 110% stronger than before. This is a correct relationship, I am broken and beat but yet I am corrected and made into the image of Christ. You know the crux is though in relationship you have two sinful people, so sometimes you are broken and bruised and beat just for the sake of being broken and bruised and beat.
Of course there are great and grand moments also but it is interesting to think about these times of brokenness. Yes I am to be perfected in relationships but I am also terribly scared and stained from relationships. We are beings who were created for perfection so we will always struggle with the notion of perfection.