Forgetting God

Over the last few weeks, our pastor has been preaching out of Exodus, and trying to drum into our heads that the Israelites were not the only ones who forgot God; we do, too.  He says that the Israelites, having been dramatically rescued from the Egyptians through the parting of the sea, suddenly forgot God when they found themselves hungry in the desert.  He calls such hunger "apocalyptic, end-of-the-world problems," and says that we face no such problems...but even our "first-world problems" cause us to forget God.  And then he uses something about an iPod charger's battery being too low as a first-world problem that makes us forget about God.  

The example doesn't resonate with me.  Personally, I don't get all that upset when my iPod is out of battery; I just charge it. It doesn't make me forget about God.  So that example doesn't speak to me.  But his point remains, and is a good one:  I do forget about God, all the time.  Even though He has poured out enormous blessings in my life, I forget about His goodness, and worry about whether He will provide for me.  On the train ride home, while discussing this with Mr. Squire, I tried to come up with examples that were more relevant to me than the iPod example.  It was hard, which just goes to show how self-unaware I am when it comes to this subject.  So that's probably a good thing to reflect on this evening... because if I can identify some of my easy trigger points, perhaps it will help me not to fall into such traps as easily in the future.

Let's see... areas in which I easily forget about God...

• Mr. Squire's safety and wellbeing.  I have a terrible and strange fear that Mr. Squire will die early in life.  It makes me terribly sad, and I can become very dull and depressed just by thinking about it.  I think the genesis of this fear is that I have an extraordinary number of friends and friends-of-friends who have lost young relatives (often spouses) at an incredibly early age (i.e. younger than 35).  One young wife died in her sleep at 25.  A young husband died in a helicopter crash at 34.  I can count three who were lost to cancer.  And so I also fear that my nearest and dearest will be taken away from me, too.  Even the thought (considered too long) is enough to put me in a funk.  And I fret over every bike ride (will his become a white ghost bicycle?), every flight (will he crash?), every car ride (accident?), and even when he's away playing ball (who knows what crazy people will do!).  It's a little insane.  And I forget that God holds our lives--including Mr. Squire's life.  God has already done the impossible by bringing to me this incredibly loving and servant-hearted (not to mention ridiculously hilarious) man...and God holds our lives together in any event.  Yet I keep worrying.  It's silly.

• Finances.  God has provided for us in so many ways in this area.  He let me keep my job during the economic downturn in 2008--even as many other lawyers more qualified than me were being laid off.  He let me pay back my loans with impressive speed.  He gave my roommate and I an unheard-of rent reduction during my first three years in the City.  And He blessed the Squires with a rent-stabilized apartment (off of Craigslist, no less) in a city where real estate is prohibitively expense -- and He even planted a gorgeous garden and park just 100 feet away, bringing my beloved nature to me for free.  So...why do I worry about finances still?  It's as if I have forgotten all that He has provided, or looked at it askance, with an arched brow.  Why is that?

• Future work.  We all know this about me.  I have no idea what I'm doing now.  I feel as if God has dropped me into the desert and left me there to fend for myself.  Of course this cannot be true.  Yet I feel this way, day after day.  I don't know what the future will bring.  And it scares me.  So I develop plans in my head--many, many plans.  What I really want is to hear a word from the Lord on this.  But I'm sure that to some degree, I just don't trust Him to speak to me on this subject anymore.  Even though it is because of His doing that I am here, in New York, doing what I am doing,... somehow I feel that the future is up to me. The burden is tremendous, but needlessly so.  I myself am choosing to carry a bag of bricks.  Not sure why.

These are areas in which I must grow.  I confess my need for help and inability to help myself in these areas in particular.  Praise God for His patience and forbearance with me.  I'm looking expectantly to the future in hopes that my heart will markedly improve.