I watch the news, talk to my family and friends; I want to fold up with sorrow. Tornadoes whipping across the Midwest. An active hurricane season predicted for the fall. Earthquakes, tidal waves, floods. Accidents, cancer, death. I feel as though I’ve been gut-punched when my mom calls to tell me my cousin was killed in a motorcycle wreck last weekend. His dad was in another motorcycle wreck just a day later. He hasn’t wakened yet. My young friend – 18 years old – just had her thyroid removed because of an aggressive cancer that had spread into her lymph nodes. Other friends lose their babies. Every day, we watch dreams die and face disappointment.
I can’t hold all the sorrow – the earth can’t hold all our tears – but casting my cares on God seems useless sometimes, because when it comes down to it, He’s doing His own thing. Our dust is screaming with rage that He doesn’t step in and save us – was the earth as disappointed as the disciples when Jesus died, instead of claiming His place as King? Our dust is subjected to this toil, to this death, and we cry out against it, and accept it, and become inured to it, and it is hard to live in any hope at all when it seems as though God is only interested in His Gospel.
I see all too clearly and not clear enough. My eyes are wide open, but I feel so blind. But He promises to lead the blind in ways they have not known. And God, I don’t know this way, this way of unreserved trust when God seems like He’s off doing His own thing while tornadoes are tearing up towns and people are dying and the whole earth is crying out.
I wonder what He is waiting for. I do not wait humbly. I demand His intervention.
I’m surrounded by death when I want so badly to live, when I want to give a more innocent world to my children, a world that becomes daily more dangerous. The more I see, the more I understand that the only hope I have, the only hope I can give them, is the Gospel, that Jesus came so we could know God. Good news indeed, hard news too, for knowing Him does not mean we can manipulate Him. Knowing Him means taking Him where He is, as He is. And I made a promise once that I would.
God is focused on a different story than my story. And to me on the ground watching all this go down, it doesn’t feel fair that He gets to do that. Not if He loves us. Not if He really cares. And I don’t have an answer to throw at my struggle. He never really gave one.
But at the end of every day, I have just this, that “faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen.” That I don’t know, and He is God.
I am groaning today. Calling out from the depth of me, “even so, come quickly Lord Jesus.” We can’t do this anymore…
It keeps echoing through me, the questions. And while it’s confusing to watch, knowing God is good, perhaps the answer remains in the question. Who do we turn to if the security of earth and society cannot be trusted? And then, I ask myself whether I really would turn to God if I could find another, more tangible, source of security or place of comfort. Perhaps it isn’t like this because he wants our lives to be painful, but because the alternative is so much worse … that none would be saved without suffering. And in the end this world and time, though they seem vast, are simply the dying seed planted in eternity, and one day it will bloom and grow like the miracle we glimpse, in part, each spring.
For some reason this post made me think of my readings this morning from Romans 8…
“That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.
22-25All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
26-28Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.” (The Message)
vs.28 is my favorite… “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”
I know this is a little long, but it seemed to fit with your restless wanderings this morning.
sending hugs.
J.
That hope, my friend, is as dangerous as the world in which you’re grieving.
Keep hoping it.
I like the part about the dust. So good to see my own thoughts in your beautiful words.
Sorry it’s hard right now.
I don’t watch the news. I cannot watch the news. When I watch the news I get sucked into the depths of hell where fear, worry, anxiety and hypocondria swallows me whole, spits me out only to chew me back up again, this time in smaller pieces. My children deserve more. My husband deserves more. I DESERVE MORE. I figure if there is something God needs me to know from the news, He’ll find another way to get the message to me.