for the nights with no stars

Sometimes I miss the country.  I am a farm girl after all.  I talk to Jesus best when I'm outside gazing at the stars or the pounding waves or the rustling trees.  There are stars here and waves here and certainly plenty of trees here, but I also have the misfortune of living in a place where I don't feel safe walking by myself after dark.  Nights like tonight I want to move back to my college town where I never worried.  And to think I was threatened by the amount of people in that town, to think I missed the country then.

Tonight life became too much.  I was overcome by sadness and guilt and the overwhelming need to have God physically here with me.  I needed Jesus tonight.  

I walked to the tennis courts at my apartment complex.  A compromise between emotions and rationality, I guess.  It's pretty dark there, and I laid on the concrete and watched the stars.  I miss the stars.  They're incredibly beautiful and never changing and they remind me that no matter where I go in this world, the stars always stay the same.  I'm thankful for that.  I'm thankful for how they remind me that God is always with me and never changing, as well.

Tonight I poured out all of my thoughts to God.  Told Him how sad I was, how much tonight, at least, life just hurts.  Told Him I'd appreciate any and all wisdom He could give me.  And He was, as always, silent.

I don't know how to deal with God's silence sometimes.  Often it seems like the only sound is my thoughts ricocheting through my mind.  I fear I have made God into a God of my own design.  Need a loving God?  There he is.  Need a wise God?  Found him.  Need to know that those who wrong me will get it?  Vengeful God it is.

Tonight I stared at the stars and wished that God would speak to me.  He didn't.  I was only there for fifteen minutes, so it's not as if the experiment is very fair at all.  I didn't want it enough, maybe.  I dunno.

I do know that my heart was near to breaking tonight, and God didn't speak.  I do know that I would really have appreciated his wisdom in an audible, specific form.  He didn't oblige.  He doesn't really work that way very often, it seems.

I listened to my music, stared at the stars, half-prayed-half-thought-out-loud, and then I stood up.  I walked home.  My attention span isn't good for much beyond fifteen minutes, it seems.

But my head is clear now.  I saw the stars, and they reminded me that God doesn't change.  And God became man.  He lived among us.  Walked through life's challenges and then died a cruel death.  

And I guess that's going to have to be enough for now.  And enough for the cloudy nights, too.

Maranatha.  Come quickly, Lord Jesus.