I am aware of many people suffering right now. i’m not sure if it’s because we are all so connected through the internet or that suffering has, in fact, increased. I am burdened for those who are walking through the fire.
Right now my nephew is at the bedside of his fiancee as she struggles through her few last days on this earth. She was diagnosed in November with leukemia. He proposed to her in the hospital. The prognosis was very good. But cancer is a vicious and unpredictable monster. God is allowing her to be taken at the tender age of 20. I struggle to find value in this.
Last fall we unexpectedly lost Isaac, our first grand child 20 hours before he was born. We are awaiting the birth of our daughter’s next baby, another boy, due the same day that Isaac was due. I can’t tell our daughter that nothing will happen to her baby. She knows better. And her sister, is also pregnant with her first child. She knows better too because she walked this road with her sister and so her pregnancy involves more concern and is more of a walk of faith than it would have been if God had not chosen this for us.(You can read Isaac’s story here)
Life can get so heavy can’t it? Sometimes it’s busyness…just having a lot going on can make you question your sanity. Whether it’s mothering little ones, children or teens, we never know just where this journey we are on is going to take us. One phone call can forever change our lives.
There can be lots of good happening at the same time as the difficult, and yet the negative tends to attract our attention and emotions.
It’s not really so much exactly WHAT is going on right now as much as I can feel myself in a crisis of faith. I’ve been here many times before and for many different reasons. I cannot seem to be fully comforted by statistics or “facts” because I know better. God is sovereign and His plan WILL prevail and I really have no idea what that plan could be. I’ve been surprised before.
The knowledge that God is sovereign can bring comfort, but only if you believe that He is also good, loving and ALWAYS has our best interest in mind. If He isn’t and He doesn’t, then Him being sovereign actually really stinks.
So I’ve battled with God this week. I’ve fought Him…then I realized that I had stopped believing that He is good… and that had somehow changed everything. I started to believe that because of what was happening, that HE had changed. He assured me that He hadn’t. That He is still always good. He is still always faithful, even when I am faithless. He is weaving a plan that is so much bigger and better than we could have ever imagined. And He is the giver of grace to walk through whatever He puts in front of us. His very presence is our greatest comfort. If we never see our need for Him, we never really desire Him. That’s just how we are. It’s human nature.
The world says it’s good to be strong. God says it’s good to be broken and needy. That in our weakness, He is made strong. And so we continue to intentionally and freely “fall on the Rock” and let ourselves be broken. We worship Him in spite of our feelings, we speak what is true about Him because He has earned our trust. Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in Him because our hearts were made for Him. And He will not fail us.
Comments