Penny for your Thoughts

Recently, I watched the movie Murder in the First. The plot is (VERY loosely) based on Henri Young regarding his time spent at Alcatraz, a Federal prison back in the day. In a nutshell, the movie tells how he was arrested for stealing five dollars at a Post Office to feed his sister and himself. After being discovered with two others attempting to escape, they put him in a hell-hole of a cell where he spent three years in solitary confinement, all the while beating him, starving him, etc. The cell was pitch black, moist, and clammy. He was only let out for thirty mintues out of those three years.

After three years, they let him back into the regular prisoner population. Apparently, those three years spent alone had driven him insane. While in the cafeteria one day, he saw the inmate who had betrayed the escape attempt three years earlier. He stabbed him with a spoon in plain sight.

He was to be put on trial for first degree murder and was assigned a public defender. Initially, he spoke very little to the PD. When he finally spoke, all he wanted to know was about baseball and the status of Joe DiMaggio. The PD persevered, and eventually got answers, but Young always reverted back to talking about baseball, or things beside the case.

When confronted on why he didn't want to talk about the case, Young reminded the PD that he had been locked up, alone, for three years. All the PD wanted to talk about was the case, and the details of the case was what Young had been living and thinking about for the past three years. The case was the last thing he wanted to talk about. And here's where I began to think.

How very often it is that I come to God like that PD. After next to no communication with Him by way of choices, lifestyle, and just not talking to Him, I'll come up to Him with a case of my own that I need to have resolved NOW. "God, where should I go to college? God, what am I supposed to do with my life? God, am I going to get married or not?" The list goes on and on. And like Henri Young, God's responses seem to indicate that He cares more of my life than my circumstances or questions.

Instead of answering questions, He just wants to talk. And often times, He wants to talk about things I don't really want to discuss.

"God, where should I go to college?"
"Christine, how's that one sin problem we were talking about?"

"God, what am I supposed to do with my life?"
"Christine, we used to talk a lot more than we do now. What happened?"

"God, am I going to get married or not?"
"Christine, do you believe I'm worth living for?"

It's not that God needs my company. But I desperately need His, no matter how I may think otherwise, and He knows it. I believe God answers questions in His own time, and despite (or in spite) of my questions, if my faith rests solely in Him, He'll open doors that He wants to open. For now, He just wants to talk. Strangely enough, I find that I like talking to Him.