The shape of fog

“Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew, like showers on the new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.” Deuteronomy 32:2 NIV

Way back in the day, Mary and I lived in Fayetteville, Arkansas while I attended graduate school at the University of Arkansas. I was a Graduate Assistant, which is another way of saying I worked a lot of hours. We got paid tuition and $600 per month. I realize that was about a century ago, but it wasn’t much back then either.

We used to just go to the mall and watch people. Sounds creepy, but it was just fun to be out and we did not have money to do anything else. But one day we struck gold. We found $100 in cash just laying on a sidewalk. We may as well have hit the lottery. We went to the grocery store. I am sure Mary remembers the trip. We bought necessities, but we allowed ourselves a few extras. Our eyes were too big, however. We had picked up about $300 worth of food. I remember having to put quite a bit back.

We have joked over the years about that $100. Seeing it on the sidewalk was a much-needed blessing. Seeing what it actually bought made it look kind of small again after our hungry eyes got a little reality. If I found $100 today, I would still be happy – the size of the blessing would still be the same. However, I do not think my enthusiasm would be quite as high as back in college when we thought it might keep us from starving to death. Maybe it should be.

I was out working today going house to house. I see people who are fairly comfortable. I see people with nothing. Today it was raining all day. It was sort of light rain but with what seemed like an aggressive fog. It was everywhere. Fog is the product of air molecules saturated with moisture. It makes air visible. But everything was wet. It did not matter how you tried to cover, water got in from every direction. My leads were wet. My clothes were wet and inside my car was wet.

On the way home I was thinking about my recent prayer life. I have been praying for rain, a blessing. God has absolutely blessed me, but I have been praying the verse from Isaiah 43:19 NIV about “streams in the wasteland.” I usually do not pray for less of very many things it seems. What dawned on me today is that I tend to think of God as a bigger version of something more than I can imagine. I think financial blessing means more money. I think freedom means more time. I think God works in the more. What if I am missing the point?

What if God is not related to size or shape or quantity? What if blessing me sometimes means making my distractions smaller, i.e., less work? What if smaller margin in my finances produces opportunity to be unified with my wife? What if it produces reliance on Him? What if instead of removing sickness God uses infirmity to realign my priorities? What if I think of God as a bigger shape than I can comprehend, but He thinks of Himself as shapeless? Limitless? Impossible for me to define or even imagine?

I started thinking today about God in the rain. It was impossible to be dry. It had no shape and it had no beginning or end. It touched everything. On the way home I heard a song that had the line, “If we could pull back, the curtain of heaven, we would see His hand – on everything.” I think my own prayer life has at times sought to define God, and then ask Him to be more of that. He does not need my definition and I would rather have God be more than I can describe. Afterall, for me to define anything I have to know its limits. He loves it when I pray, but I think my attempts to define Him must amuse Him a little.

Do you find yourself asking God for more of something? Less of something? What if His blessing is just a different something?

How long have you been waiting? Could your prayer have been answered already?

Challenge: Describing God may be a little like trying to describe the shape of fog. He has no limit and He saturates everything. Let God be God. Let blessings be blessings, without the comparisons.

Rick Claiborn