I was talking to our LA Term counselor, Heather, on Friday and she asked me a question I found interesting. I confided in her about how difficult LA Term was for me, and we began discussing why I even decided to do the program to begin with. After some thought, I told her I believed God wanted me to do it. I felt quite strongly about that last semester, and I still believe it.
After hearing this, she said to me simply, “Okay, so you believe God brought you here and called you to do this program. So how is your relationship with God now?”
It was such a sudden and blunt question that I was lost for words for a moment.
It seems like such an obvious and logical question to ask now that I think about it, but for some reason it caught me completely off-guard. Where was my relationship with God? I know God brought me here to spend the semester in LA, but where did that leave Him and me? This question seems especially significant considering I am experiencing such difficulties here.
I have never been as homesick as I have been here. I have never wanted to so genuinely just drop everything I am doing and give up. As I discussed in one of my earlier posts, I have trouble even explaining what is so difficult about this semester for me. But the bottom line is that it simply is. Life is a struggle this semester, and I am trying my best to get through it. I am learning a lot, and I absolutely do not regret doing this program.
So where does this leave God and me? My relationship with God could certainly be better right now. It could also be a lot worse. I feel like I have kind of been putting my relationship with Him on hold for this semester. It is as if I am saying, “Hold on, God. I’ll work on us once LA Term is over. Once my life is good and normal once again.” It’s almost like I don’t even have the energy to work on my relationship with God, because I always feel so drained and tired from the daily struggles of LA Term. This, of course, is not exactly the greatest approach to take, but it is the one I realize I have subconsciously chosen for most of my semester here in LA thus far.
It scares me that I can so easily push God away like that when life gets a little rough. Why is it so easy for me to tell God “later”? What scares me even more than losing my faith is keeping my faith but remaining stagnant in it.
As C.S. Lewis once said, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance and if true is of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
If not now, when? When will I once again devote myself to cultivating my relationship with the one I love? When praying about this earlier, God asked me what is going to happen if I feel the same way at Oxford next semester. What if I struggle there too? What if I get terribly homesick? Will I simply put my relationship with Him on hold once again? I told Him no. I won’t feel the same way because I know I will be able to see Him a lot more clearly in the beauty and charm of London. I cannot imagine going there and not seeing Him in the plethora of beautiful, artistic, magical places in Oxford.
After my explanation, God’s only response was, “Well, you have to learn to be able to see me in the city, also.”
It frustrates me that I haven’t quite figured this out yet. And it’s not that I haven’t seen God at work here, because I certainly have. Yet, it is simply different. I have not seen Him in the usual places I see Him, such as in the sound of ocean waves crashing on the shore or the sight of snow capped mountains in the Sierras. Instead, I have seen God in the face of a homeless friend who offered us his umbrella on a rainy day. I have seen Him in the eyes of a carwash worker as he told his story of workplace abuse and wage theft. I have seen Him in the kind and gentle words of an elderly, crippled man at the bus stop.
I am seeing God in the city, but I need to learn to also walk with Him throughout life in the city. I have no idea how to change this, but my first step will simply be to pray. My prayer is for God to change my heart and my attitude. It is to ask God to hold my hand throughout all of this, even when I draw my hand back or try to push Him away. I pray He will lead me through this city and complete the work He is doing in my life. I pray that in this vast and hectic city, I will find God and I will find hope.
