It would be way too easy for us to think our current frustration was related to our temporary if longer than imagined) global circumstances. The new limits we are all experiencing are unavoidable. And, we certainly need to honor them for sure if we are to see them come to a conclusion anytime soon. Today, however, I’d like to look a little deeper at our current sense of frustration in life. The word itself literally means in vain.

How many of us are frustrated with The God we don’t believe in whether we are Christian or some other stripe? The longer I live the more I encounter people (myself included) who have significant frustration with their own efforts, the actions of others, or some other frustration about the way things are or are not. I’m prone to sweeping statements so here may be another one of those moments, let the reader beware. Does not our frustration come from thinking life is measured by our efforts or those of others? Do we not then think God should be like us?

God, why the hell don’t you do something about that? God, what the hell were they thinking? God, that’s crazy as hell? We go on and on in our daily lives constantly evaluating the way things or people are and in so doing find ourselves comparing ourselves to others. This can land us in a significantly frustrated life. Michael Casey in his wonderful book Grace: On The Journey To God digs a little deeper into our frustration, I think. He conveys the notion that our comparisons imply at some level that we are better than the one we are critiquing in our judgments of them. We resist this idea saying no I’m just stating a fact. Whose fact? How do you know it’s a fact? Whose standard? Is that not the issue? Is that not what got us in this frustration to begin with in The Garden. We ate from that Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil with the temptation we thought was an invitation (evil is slippery) to be like God. What happened? We were in a state of separation from God and others—hell. And, the longer we live in this way the more our frustration grows. Hell is frustration as our living seems in vain. Only God gives life meaning and so relieves our frustrations. But, then we must ask who is God if God is not the calculating, judgmental, standard bearer that we are?

Could our frustration come from a God we don’t believe in as we functionally believe in our day to day in a god of getting what is deserved? The Christian Bible reveals a very different look at God. The God revealed in Jesus says, I did not come to judge the world but to save it? Is our frustration possibly more rooted in our having our own standards apart from The God who makes his sun to rise on the good and the evil, and send his rain on the just and the unjust?

Maybe our frustration is rooted in bearing the burden of our own standards when God’s are much lower and holier than we ever thought about being with ourselves or others? Are we frustrated as hell because we feel powerless to impose our standards on anybody else (as if we should) and the burden of not living up to our own standards most of the time anyway, but we doggedly try, all the while denying the more gracious way of living that God has made available in our flesh (Jesus) and has poured out on all flesh (Holy Spirit)? Are we frustrated as hell, living largely an impersonal life with others that objectifies by taking about, rather than with and acquiesces for an individualistically minded life while we are breathing until we die a death characterized by the sin that God came to save us from, which we didn’t deserve but were certainly worthy of as those made in His Image?

Maybe, in this time of not being able to do as many things, and not earn as much flattery in doing for others, we could remember how we were created by The Father—generously, how we are all saved through The Son—graciously, and how we are inspired to live with others post crucifixion through The Holy Spirit—generatively. God is not as hard on us as we are with ourselves and each other. I certainly can identify with you if you identify with this. Let us turn together from this strenuous way of living and discover the rest God offers us for our weariness of body, soul and spirit.