Disconnected

While I was home over Spring Break, I had the opportunity to grab coffee with one of my oldest friends. It was so refreshing to sit and talk about what the Lord is doing here in these seasons of our lives, to reflect on where we have been, and to dream about where we are going. As my friend caught me up on everything going on back home, one thing she told me really caught my attention. On Wednesday nights, our staff and volunteers have been doing Youth Alpha with our high school students. Youth Alpha is designed to spark questions and create discussion among the students about the core beliefs of Christianity. As my two friends sat down leading their group of high school sophomores, one student spoke up and said something like this, "God is like the wifi. I want to know him, but I don't have the password." What a profound statement out of the mouth of this fifteen year old kid.

What he was articulating in that moment, maybe more clearly that any other student I have ever heard, was the disconnect he was feeling between himself and his creator. He wasn't struggling with the idea of God, he wasn't battling to accept the existence of God, he was losing the fight to find himself connected with God. This is the reality for every person who has never accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. They may believe in God, they may know he's real and want to see what he is doing, but they don't have the access required to be a part of it. We've all sat in coffee shops or friends' living rooms and tried unsuccessfully to guess the password to the highly coveted, free wifi. Very rarely have I been successful in doing so. People riddle their passwords with capital letters and numbers of seemingly no significance making it impossible for me to know what it is without getting up and asking. God didn't complicate things, though. He didn't create some long, impossible to remember password, and he doesn't keep it hidden where his houseguests can't find it. He simply humbled himself, became a man, took my place on the cross, and overcame death so that I could type in "Jesus" next to "password" and have access to the Father.

We don't have to live disconnected. If I'm honest, though, somedays I feel like my connection is pretty slow. Some days, I go into my network preferences and start typing in alternative passwords. I try things like "personal achievements" or "relationships" or "self-gratification" or "good intentions" and then I find myself in the middle of weeks like this one and it feels like I'm back on dial-up. You remember those days, right? Only one person can use the internet at a time, if I'm on the internet then you can't use the phone, it takes a solid 5 minutes to even get onto your home page, and good luck googling anything really quick because it just isn't going to happen. I get frustrated and want to throw my laptop across the floor, but the whole thing could be solved if I would just stop trying to fix what isn't broken. I get frustrated and want to lie down and give up, but the whole thing could be solved if I would just stop trying to substitute things for Jesus.