God Doesn't Always Hold Up My Bike While I Am Pedaling

If you're as old as I am, you might remember a time back in the hippie days when the country was fighting a winless war and our leaders were being assassinated and peace rallies turned into riots. We heard the cry many times from many places: God is dead!

It seemed as though the world was out of control. The captain of the ship had stepped away from the wheel and we were sinking. There were no lifeboats, just sandbags.

I was a kid then. I thought that's the way our existence would be forever. I knew no other social environment. Maybe, I wondered, God really is dead.
I know better now. Sometimes God does step away from the wheel. That's the way my dad taught me to ride a bike: by holding me up and then, without a word, letting me pedal on my own while staying a safe distance behind to catch me.

The following is from a book, Coming Clean, by Seth Haines (https://modernmrsdarcy.com/books/coming-clean-a-story-of-faith/). The passage is a little long for this blog I try to keep brief, but I find every word worth copying.

"Perhaps you know the feeling of fraudulent faith, of adult disbelief? Perhaps it is rooted in your childhood too?

"The son who was molested; the daughter who lost her daddy when she was just a girl; the wife whose husband is a disengaged, overachieving, road warrior of a salesman; the husband whose wife has been in an affair for all these years. There are some who have been used and discarded by the church, others who do not believe their worth, their beauty, that they are loved -- much less liked -- by God. There are those who have been beaten, those who are poor, those who are ever and always on the lesser side of advantage.

"Anyone who's been one of these, who's felt the sting of unanswered prayer, shares the same searing question.

"Where did our God go?...

"The bottle is not the thing. The addiction is not the thing. The pain is not the thing."

Well then what is "the thing?"

The answer is clear to me. It's God. He's still out there. He's still in me. We just have to look.