by Lucy makes a very poignant statement in Prince Caspian. The children and the dwarf have gone to find the Prince, and they’ve been following Peter’s direction. Only Peter still hasn’t gotten it through his head that he’s been gone 1400 years.
They come to a ravine where there’s a stream running many feet below, and they decide that they must go around somewhere down the river. Then Lucy sees Aslan, and he’s seeming to signal that she should follow him.
There are four different reactions to her statement:
- The dwarf doesn’t believe there really is an Aslan.
- Peter wonders why Aslan wouldn’t have made himself visible to him.
- Edmund says that they shouldn’t question Lucy because she’d been right before.
- Susan wonders why no one else saw them.
It is to Susan that Lucy makes a very good response– “Perhaps you weren’t looking for him.” — Ouch.
And yet I believe that this a big problem for Christians today. We sing about a living and ever present God. We say that we believe that He is at work, and yet do we actually look for Him?
By this I mean, to what do we give credit to the things that happen in our lives? To what do we attribute blessings? Who sustains us and allows us our very lives?
I don’t think that many of us look for God because we have a degree of mental assent. We believe that we cannot see Him, and we mistakenly believe that He’s not communicating with us. Oh, we read our Bible and pray. And we believe that that is it. We think that He might heal our sickness or help us get a job, but we can be truly oblivious to what He is at work doing right now in our area or in our own hearts.
Lucy’s right on here. Many times we don’t see God because we aren’t looking for Him. We’ve explained Him away with some scientific process, or we’ve attributed something that is His provision to ourselves, our abilities or our job. What foolishness.
As it proved to be the case in terms of crossing the ridge. It ended up that He was there, and He did have a direction. But like Lucy asks later– what was the cost of not following when God called? We’ll look at that a while later.
True, true. A friend of mine who was struggling with her faith a year ago was doing so because she couldn’t feel God. Hubby’s struggling with that now. They all get so frustrated instead of sitting and listening, trusting that if God’s not going to speak, things are still okay.
@Anna Ananas: God is quiet right before He is ready to take you to the next level with Him. God’s nature is to be active and speak, sometimes we need to be listening.