I'm tired today. I think all your collective exhaustion from turning in projects and taking exams has run over into the rest of us, and even Mother Nature is grey and gloomy today (at least here in Kentucky). The cosmos has been out of alignment for the entire week, in fact. I should have known on Tuesday morning, when I opened my bedroom door to the announcement that my absent roommate's cat had had an "accident" on our sofa, and my other roommate was too sickened by the excrement to clean it up. So guess who cleaned up the fresh cat poop? When your week starts out like that, you should know it will be one of April showers.

You probably know where I'm going with this-- in these showery days, we should look to God for comfort. But that's almost too simplistic. There are certainly times when I think, "God is with me, so it's okay," and that is enough. Many times, though, I feel pretty much like I'm muddling through the rain without much clue where to go. I pray and don't quite hear the "still, small voice." I read the Bible and nothing seems to speak to me. I don't have the "TBN experience," where someone touches me on the forehead and I fall flat on my back, problem solved. The little showers in life-- the work, the relationships, the questions about the future-- mount up and overwhelm us all, but there isn't any clear path through all of them put together.

Yet I think there is a reason that Romans 5 talks about struggles as a good thing, although that's not the way we see them. For it is in muddling through the showers that we gain the nourishment to grow. Our faith truly is dead if it exists only in a building we go to on Sundays. It is when we bring faith out of that building and wrestle with it in our messy lives, admitting the questions, acknowledging the doubts, and seeking the answers, that we ever become "followers of the Way."

And sometimes, when I finally admit my complete inability to find God by searching for the path, that's when God actually comes and finds me. It's like God says, "You can't define me. You can't twist me. And most importantly, you can't control me." God doesn't reveal God's self on my terms. And when I give up everything I can think of to find the answer, only then can I finally hear God's voice in prayer. Only then does Scripture become relevant.

So keep muddling in the showers. Because I do believe that God will come alongside you in the journey. It may be at Target when you told God to meet you at Wal-Mart. But God will meet you somewhere, and speak words of calm to your storm.

"And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." --Romans 5:3-5

Kelsey