Columbus, C.S., and the God of All Comfort

As I checked my email for the ump-teenth time this afternoon, it hit me: My god is too small.

Before you get too excited and start putting a tract in the first-class mail headed for Columbus, allow me to point out the lack of capitalization on the above "g".

Because by no means is the God of Glory, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, too small. No, no, He is the One who raised Christ Jesus from the dead.

The god I'm talking about is decidedly smaller than the aforementioned God who sits enthroned above the earth, looking down upon the sons of men as if they were grasshoppers--yet still taking notice of us image-bearers of the Holy One.

The god I'm talking about is nothing more than a crude replica of the God of All Comfort. This mini-g deity is simply the god of comfort, offering--in the place of unconditional trust in the creating, sustaining and redeeming love of God--a paycheck.

Not that I'm against paychecks per se, in fact quite the opposite, I'm for 'em. Especially as it applies to supporting my family, as per the emphatic direction given in 1 Timothy 5:8, which declares that  a so-called believer sitting on his duff, neglecting the needs of his family, is in a worse predicament than that of an unbeliever.

Or, to steal a line from It's a Wonderful Life, "(Money) comes in pretty handy 'round here, Bub!"

With right around 25 applications in process and just over a week into moving my fledgling family across the country to the fair (and slightly humid) city of Columbus, Ohio, I'm ready to get working.

A natural and godly inclination, to be sure, but one that is easily perverted by the Enemy.

Here's how it has worked in my mind over this last week: I'll spend a few hours at a time feverishly applying to anything from local coffee shops to multi-million dollar marketing corporations, then I'll refresh my inbox, literally not willing to leave a new email unopened for more than a minute or two.

Since I have my email set to pop up when a new email arrives, the question to "Is there a new email?" is invariably "No" when I check it this way, but still, I want to be extra sure I'm not missing something, as if the email will read, "This job will self-destruct in 10-9-8..."

Now I'm sure I'm not the first, last or only person to ever experience this cycle, but what I noticed with increased clarity this afternoon was the fact that, instead of thanking God for allowing me to play a part in His story and asking to make me faithful to play it well, I have been begging that He would quickly bring along a job, period.

But what if, during this time of job-seeking, God is not most passionate that I find a job, but that I seek Him more, that I realize my dependence upon Him more. What if He desires me to pray for His kingdom to come with a fervency that I wouldn't have if everything was dialed in?

Could it be that He is using this unique time--now more than ever--to cause me to deny myself, take up my cross and follow Him?

If that's going to happen, I know that the top casualty is going to be the mini-g god of comfort.

It's going to end up looking something like the scene C.S. Lewis creates in The Great Divorce, where one of the ghosts has an extremely painful lizard-ectomy of the shoulder. The lizard had been a nuisance and a tormentor of the ghost up until this point, directing his paths, yet disallowing him to be free and whole.

When the lizard is finally removed from the ghost's shoulder, there's a terrible, agonizing scream from the ghost, but he is transformed into a solid man, and the lizard is transformed into a great stallion that suddenly serves as a faithful steed--not an encumbrance--for the now-solid man.

Uncomfortable as the process may be right now, there stands the God of All Comfort, promising to replace my self-made, shabby version of "comfort" with that infinite, unfading variety of Comfort found only in sharing in the afflictions of Christ.

The test is going to be whether or not I check my email right after I get done posting this self-directed sermon.

Ready? Set? Go.