I recall a night not long ago when things stopped making sense to me. I am almost certain anyone reading this has experienced a similar night or time in their life like the one I encountered that night and many nights. For really no reason at all, I was angry, confused, and felt as if I had been thrown into something I had never asked to be apart of in the first place: life. What's the point? It is the question that has always been unanswered. We have all gotten a little too deep inside of our existentialist emotions and have started to wander down the trail of mysteries we cannot understand. It's frustrating and scary to say the least. I have been raised as a Christian my whole life, so it is instinctive for me to shut down these kind of "what is the meaning of life" thoughts with a one word answer: God. But the truth is even the strongest of Christian upbringings cannot save us from these thoughts. Trying to answer the same questions with the same default answer over and over tends to make the answer itself lose its very meaning. And so that night, like many nights, I found myself drowning in questions and mysteries that made no sense and the only thing I had to hang onto was an answer that has lost its meaning. My sister was kind enough to notice my spirits were low and asked me how I was feeling. And so we went down the mysterious trail together. I told her that by logic I knew there was a supreme being that created us and his purpose in doing so was that we might glorify him. But this is where my heart got stuck. Why would God have created us just to glorify Him? My human nature began to wonder: isn't that kind of selfish? I am here and have to try and figure this life out and face hurt, pain and darkness just because God decided He should be glorified? It was a dark space to be, but it was one God allowed me to be in. My sister, who is an artist, explained to me that in order to feel good and to feel like she is living she has to be making art. She continued by explaining that writers must write in order to feel complete (which is what I am doing right now). Chefs must cook, musicians must make music, builders must build, makers gotta make, and doers gotta do. And so why did God create? What is the point? God created because He is a creator and creators must create. And God has created and is still creating the most complex and mysterious piece of work imaginable. In fact it is not imaginable. And we are a part of it. The good, the bad, and the ugly; the beautiful, the unexplainable, and the mysterious. And the creator while He made us all different: writers, artist, makers, thinkers, introverts and extroverts, He made us the same in one way. We have all been made to be lovers. And lovers must love. We were made to love, believe and trust the creator and it is when we don't that all of the mysteries and the questions make the answer look meaningless. It may not make sense to us, but that is okay because we we were not created to know all, but rather we were created to experience the mysterious and life changing revelation of faith and trust in what we cannot understand. As much as my human nature would much rather just be angry about that, my heart is being pulled ever so sweetly towards something much different than anger: joy. The joy that comes in submitting ourselves to love the creator is continually a work in progress for us all, but it is a good work. It is a good fight to fight.

My boyfriend and I were discussing God as the creator the other evening and he described an image I hope will forever stay in my mind and heart: at the end of it all, when time has come to an end there is God, and He is standing alone looking at the most beautiful, intricate, gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, joyous painting to have ever existed. The mind cannot even fathom the painting, and He has made it. He is standing back and looking at all the joy and sorrow and life and death and victories and losses and just as it was in the beginning: it is good. We are the ones inside the painting. The creator creates and we have been created for Him, and that is good.