NOTHINGNESS
Psalm 106:7-15
Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies; but provoked him at the sea, even at the Red sea. Nevertheless he saved them for his name's sake, that he might make his mighty power to be known. He rebuked the Red sea also, and it was dried up: so he led them through the depths, as through the wilderness. And he saved them from the hand of him that hated them, and redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. And the waters covered their enemies: there was not one of them left. Then believed they his words; they sang his praise. They soon forgat his works; they waited not for his counsel: But lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert. And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul.
The many hours I sat on the side of highways in America. Sometimes the view were mountains, plains, deserts, and even the concrete jungles in the big cities; for hours I would sit, in some places all day, waiting for the appointed person or persons to give me a ride to the next waiting station.
This was my life of hitch hiking from one church to the next as a teenage evangelist. The one thing I learned in the long waiting times without a human to talk to, no TV to watch, just simply nothingness was "I am not in control."
I learned that "nothingness" is only a perception. In those hours of nothingness were the greatest moments of conversations I and Daddy God spent with each other. It was as though the nothingness I encountered were the greater opportunities I had to spend with Him or for Him to spend with me.
It is not that our world is spinning to fast or that we do not have the time, it is simply we humans are to uncomfortable with nothingness and cannot see the value of empty space. God is waiting to fill the empty space, waiting to burn in that little bush on the back side of the desert. It was the void in the beginning of time that the Holy Spirit moved upon the face of the waters. Just to be empty once again and to know the value of nothingness. Is it possible for us to dismantle our denial of being in control? Are we to busy; are we to full? Is this the leanness of soul God gave to Israel when He gave them their request? Moses could see what the people could not see; it was in the nothingness of his own life that opened his eyes to the greatest presence in the middle of nowhere on the back side of the desert. When we cannot change a thing about where we are is when where we are changes us. It is not in the world that we shape that we find ourselves and understand who we are; it is when we see past our world and are able to see His world that we truly find ourselves and understand ourselves for who we really are.
