Strobe Light Madness

Three days ago, after a rather painful day at work, my family and I walked into the night service that our church holds. Being a rather empty service we decided to sit in the second to front row, which was slowly becoming our usual spot.

This time however, there was a substantially annoying and persistent problem that distracted me from outside one of the churches side doors. It was a large light that spent the entire service trying to stay on but only managed episodes of flickering and had caught the attention of my self-prescribed ADD.

In the effort of trying to invite God into my distractions more, I decided to pray into whether it was a constructive or contrarily destructive thing to be fixated on. I felt stupid, when a lack of reply and a sudden realisation that I was talking to God about a lamp post kicked in. I walked out of the church disappointed in myself for what I’d spent my time on, “A lamp post, seriously Faith?” was something I was sure God was saying.

The following day, I had a to-do list the size that you know is impossible to complete in one day but still live in hope. The majority of the list were things that could be done on a computer but all had long hours attached to them and needed determination. I’d made a cup of tea, had my list ready and was about to start conquering the world when, what do you know, my laptop decided to die. It was just dead, no sounds, no screen and for me, no hope.

I tried to make headway with the list on my phone but it took me accidentally deleting half my progress to finally give up and vegetate on the couch.

In my forced spare time, I looked outside into our garden for a brief second or two and saw our lamp post, reminding me of the day before. I realised just how similar my trust on God had been to the state of that flickering light. Over the past month, if not longer, my trust in God had been flickering, events ranging from the silliness of badly made cups of tea to more serious matters like life choices for the future, my trust moved. Although we often fail to admit it, our trust in God can be at times easily swayed by the silly things. If not trust, it’s our hope or our passion in and for God that are equally as challenged. The light flickered all shades, faded, bright, off or barely seen, my life recently had been a good mixture of all the above in terms of trusting Him, similar to that of a strobe light.

I spent time praying into how to start making myself more constant for God but was reminded that God is a God of the sporadic and the constant, He delights in us when we’re strong and takes joy in overcoming our weaknesses. God is the same even when we aren’t and His love doesn’t dim when we feel we can no longer shine.

He is the constant, He is the foundation and He is the light.