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God and Electricity  I am a lot of things, but an electrician is not one of them. Until recently the most notable thing I had ever done with electricity was trying to unplug a stereo with a screwdriver as a child. All I got out of that exchange was a little jolt and a screwdriver that was welded to the plug. My dad had a lot of fun trying to undo that one. That incident has been filed in my brain under the heading, DON’T DO THIS. Consequently I have steered clear of pretty much everything related to electricity for about twenty-five years now. Yes, I let one bad experience ruin me on things. I haven’t had a bite of fish in a couple of decades either after nearly choking on a catfish bone, and I went several years without eating Mexican food because of one bad experience. I am not necessarily proud of this; it is just part of who I am. So it was with a little bit of trepidation that I decided to do a little rewiring in the garage recently. Really there wasn’t much to it. All I had to do was take down one light fixture and put up another one in its place, pretty simple really. It was a fairly easy process: make sure the switch is off, connect one black wire to another black wire, and then do the same thing with the white wires and that was pretty much the sum of it. It was while I was in the attic trying not to fall through the ceiling that I was thinking about my life situation and it occurred to me that a lot of times we want God to be like electricity. Electricity is a powerful and creative force that can do amazing things in the right hands. Electricity is pretty straight forward to someone who knows how it works. Best of all, electricity is easily manipulated. A wire is diverted from one light to another and suddenly my garage goes from having very little light to something slightly dimmer than a supernova. It would be great for most of us if God was like electricity, powerful yet easy to direct. Everyone wants a powerful God in their life, but if we are honest, we really want a God who will allow us to change the destination of His wiring and to flip His switch on and off at our leisure. But that is not who God is. He is not predictable in the sense that we don’t know His plans. Despite our best attempts, God does not respond to attempts to manipulate Him or his path. We have jobs we want to change, family problems we want solved, financial needs, and sickness, and yet when we go to flip on the God switch nothing happens, and so we become discouraged, frustrated, and angry. We react in such a way because we confuse the identity of God with the identity of electricity. The purpose of electricity in my life is to make it easier and more comfortable; the purpose of God in my life is to glorify Him, and we don’t always get to choose how that happens. This identity confusion tricks us into thinking that we are really the ones in control. Maybe sometimes we just need to realize that our best attempts to control our lives are a lot like a little boy trying to unplug a stereo with a screwdriver. Staff Writer: Aaron Sharp |
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