“I’m Okay”

Last Friday I was driving on a hill along Admiral Callaghan Lane, a road running parallel to Interstate 80. I came upon an accident that appeared to have just happened. One car had moved to a parking lot, but its rear bumper was on the middle of the street. Another car had crashed into the fence that was on the side of I-80. It was quite a crash because a whole wheel assembly had broken off and was lying beside the car. In fact, were it not for the cyclone wire fence, the car could easily have fallen off the hill onto the freeway and hit on-coming traffic.

I stopped to find out if anyone needed help. I saw that two teenage boys were already assisting the driver. She was already standing beside the car. When I asked if anyone was hurt, she said, “I’m okay. I’m okay.” There were no visible signs of injury. But she did look dazed. In fact, when she tried to walk she tottered and fell. She still insisted she was fine. But how she acted belied her claim. I left when the EMTs arrived.

“I’m okay.” Many times that’s the way we humans respond to God. We want to project the impression that we don’t need help from anyone, not even God. We’re strong; we’re intelligent. We can handle life. Or so we say. But we’re not okay. And we know it. Yet why do we refuse to admit it, even to ourselves? We try to act like everything’s fine. But to continue to do so may only mean exposing ourselves to more danger and the possibility of getting hurt.

Even as religious folk, many times we replace God’s actual presence and work in our lives with substitutes and through them convince ourselves we’re okay. In her book Enjoying the Presence of God, Jan Johnson lists some of these substitutes: programs and activities; people, especially those we love; service; tools for knowing God; spiritual success; even experiences with God.

But unless we focus on knowing God himself and letting him do his work in our lives, our “okay-ness” will just be a mirage. Insisting on doing things on our own strength, we eventually will totter and fall. Without God, we really are not, will never really be, okay.

“This is what the LORD says: ‘Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,’ declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 9:23–24 NIV).

—Keith Y. Jainga