Last weekend I was driving to meet a friend for coffee
downtown. As I was nearing our meeting location, she sent me a message that she
has arrived but that downtown was terribly crowded and parking was proving a
nightmare to find.
I panicked a bit. Most of the parking on the streets of our
downtown is parallel and I will admit right here and now that I don’t know how
to parallel park. It’s not that I don’t like to do so. I don’t know how. I did
it once to pass my driving test more than twenty years ago and have not done it
since. I go to ridiculous lengths to avoid it, actually.
Lately, God and I have been having an ongoing argument,
debate, screaming fight, conversation about trust. It has way too
many layers to be dissected here but let’s just say that I have deep trust
issues and that this can make a relationship that is, at its very core based on
trust and faith, difficult. So we struggle on. Him telling me that He is
trustworthy and me saying, “Yeah? Show me.”
The morning of the parking situation we were not at our best,
God and me, so I sarcastically prayed (can you be sarcastic with God?): “Ok,
God of the parking space, Lord of the parking lot, find me a spot.” I had
always secretly sort of smirked at people who would give God public thanks for
finding them a good spot to park. “God surely has better things to worry about
than you not having to walk a few more steps, come on!” was my very Christ-like
thought towards those people.
Not 1o seconds and a half a block later I saw a car pulling
out of a parking spot which was at the end of the line (no parallel parking!),
less than 20 feet from the coffee shop where I was to meet my friend, and there
were even 40 minutes left in the meter. Score!
I’ll be honest. With a world full of hunger, wars, slavery,
poverty, pain, and suffering to care for I have a hard time understanding why
God would hear my sarcastic, inane, seemingly irrelevant prayer for a parking
spot on a Saturday morning. But He did.
He remains a mystery to me in so many ways. But as I
continued my dialogue with Him that day (this time much less sarcastically) a
thought began to emerge clearly in my heart:
God cares.
And no, I don’t think that God will always help me find a good parking spot. This is not about a
parking spot. It is about a God that finds ways to say: “I love you. I see you.
I hear you” wherever we are, in whatever situation we find ourselves. Big or
small.
I guess I can compare it to walking by my daughter on my way
to the kitchen and stroking her cheek gently. It’s not much. It’s a simple
gesture, really. But it is an easy way to let her know she is loved.
