Unexpected Clarity (of another sort)

Over the past week or so, I've stumbled upon a random assortment of bits and pieces -- whether it be music, blogs, books, comments -- that remind me of the sovereignty of God. On my journey, one thing I have noticed is that when God wants me to really focus on something, He makes it pretty clear. Not always, but very often. When I really needed to address the issue of forgiving my enemies, for example -- those individuals who have hurt me and my family -- I was bombarded for over a week with thoughts, words, emails, blogs, phone calls, books, etc. all seemingly disconnected, all pertaining to the "Art of Forgiving." It was almost creepy-cool how it came about, this obstacle on my path that I needed to think and pray about -- not necessarily for the sakes of those individuals, but for my own sake and my own freedom.

Like the idea of forgiveness, this latest bombardment has rained down on me, reminding me of God's sovereignty. There have been blogs I've discovered that I never saw before, passages in books that have leaped off the page, random conversations which made my antenna buzz. Very interesting stuff. But the biggest revelation was a very unexpected bombshell, an answer to an old "what if," an answer that we weren't sure we would ever receive.

Two years ago, as our time at our second church was clearly ticking away, we began a lengthy, intensive discernment process to see where our next pit-stop would be. We had needs and we felt confident that we could go to God with them -- one of which, being at the top of our list, was the need to be close to our families. We looked at churches in PA, NJ, and other states in the torso of the East Coast, but the pickings were slim. At last God lead us to a church in New England and it looked almost perfect.

For six months we prayed, we talked, we discerned, we prayed more -- everything short of fasting, really, since that is not a realistic option. :) For six very long months we corresponded with the leaders of this church, we emailed, prayed with them, met with them, accepted the call, and were "this close" to buying a house ... when suddenly it all collapsed. We don't know what happened, really. One day things were sailing along smoothly and the next ... it came crashing down. They withdrew the call at the blink of an eye and we were left standing at the side of the road, mouths gaping open, shoulders slumped, wondering what just happened. Right away we turned our cries toward heaven.

Why, God? Why would you do something like this? Why would you allow us to get our hopes up, having sought Your direction, felt Your guidance, knew in the very marrow of our faithful bones that this was the path You wanted us to journey down ... and now this? It makes no sense! We feel hurt, betrayed, scrambled, deflated, kicked in the gut ... why?!

We had a decision to make, a crossroads to face: either wallow in the not knowing, feel resentment about God's leading, or we could choose to move on ... to say that, for some reason, this is what we were supposed to do, something we had to experience, and for some reason this is as far as it goes. God knows why, but we don't -- and we have to be OK with that. There's a bigger picture here that we can't see ... we just played a small part in it, and even though we can't see beyond the "now," we have to trust that God knows what He's doing.

We chose the latter path, the path of trusting in God's sovereignty. It hurt, sure -- we were emotionally drained from spending six long, grueling months in that process. But we knew we had to let it go, and we did. Would we ever get an answer to all of those "why?" questions? Would we ever see more of that Big Picture? Maybe ... but maybe not. We had to just let it go. That was two years ago.

We haven't thought much about it since, really. Yes, we feel some disappointment occasionally (the house we almost bought was a dream!) but there was ultimately a great deal of peace in just moving on. Granted, a lot has happened over the course of these past two years since that situation, and these more recent events have usurped anything else, but then ... but then ... God stepped in.

Don was surfing the internet, checking out various theological sites and blogs, when he suddenly came across an article that knocked him over the head. He showed it to me, and I too was blown away ... for there before me on the screen was an answer to the "why?" questions of two years earlier, a great glimpse of that bigger picture that only God knew of.

The article was about this same church, who in the course of these past two years had been embroiled in an ugly, tooth-and-nail fight with their bishop. We had known there was tension, but over the years it had escalated. Now it was announced that this church had picked up and left the denomination, joining another segment of the larger Anglican Communion. The fighting is bitter, the legality of it all is ugly and messy, with property and buildings and money all tied up in the squabble.

Don said to me, "Can you just imagine what our lives would have been like if we had gotten that job and were there now?" I shudder to think about it. In the middle of the fighting, all the uncertainty, all the ugliness, a purchased home, a big mortgage in the midst of financial questions (and now a horrific housing market!), no family or friends for support ... the list goes on. Life would have been unimaginably horrible.

"Wow," said Don breathlessly. "Thank God He saw the bigger picture and spared us from that."

Indeed.

So where am I going with this? God is sovereign. He knows. Two years later, we were finally able to see the answer to why we went through all of that stuff that we did. It feels good, this kind of closure, this answer, this knowing. Now fast forward since that time, God certainly didn't spare us the hell of our last church, that's for sure. Why would he spare us from that experience two years ago, only to have us face a future torture that was far, far worse? I don't know ... but stumbling across this article helps me to trust a little bit more, to know that our experiences in that last church -- while a million times more horrible -- are also part of a "bigger picture," one which we cannot see. We have to trust. We learned to be OK with what we went through two years ago -- it took a little time, but we got there. And in the getting there, in the trusting and in the letting go, we very unexpectedly received an answer. And maybe ... just maybe ... a few years down the road from now we'll stumble across another article, or hear some news, or whatever, giving us an answer to all of the "why" questions on this part of the journey.

Or ... maybe not. Answers are not guaranteed, are they.

But the point is this: regardless of whether or not we ever find out, we have no choice but to trust in God's sovereignty. He knows ... and that needs to be enough. By trusting in that, we can move on.

Thank you, God, for this clarity, this very unexpected answer. It did my soul some good.