This image is on my desktop -- whenever I walk past the computer, or sit down to blog or email or write or work, I see it. I absorb it. I remember it.Jen sent me this verse a little while ago and I find myself returning to it again and again:
God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits, to the woman who diligently seeks. It's a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God. It's a good thing when you're young to stick it out through the hard times. When life is heavy and hard to take, go off by yourself. Enter the silence. Bow in prayer. Don't ask questions: Wait for hope to appear. Don't run from trouble. Take it full-face. The "worst" is never the worst. Why? Because the Master won't ever walk out and fail to return. If He works severely, He also works tenderly. His stockpiles of loyal love are immense. He takes no pleasure in making life hard, in throwing roadblocks in the way. (Lamentations 3:25-33)She pointed out the last verse specifically -- "He takes no pleasure in making life hard, in throwing roadblocks along the way." She exhorted me to read this "over and over and over again" -- and I do.
This trusting thing ... this full and complete (and, for me, "unnatural") reliance upon God through all circumstances is hard for me. I've realized that it has to be a daily discipline, like brushing my teeth or washing the dishes. I find that I get upset with myself -- my gosh, it just shouldn't be this way ... right? But it is. Yet recognizing that very fact is what prods me along.
I'm bound to falter; I will forget. When the next blow, the next swirling squall, the next crashing wave comes -- and it will, for that is part of life -- I know in my fallenness I will most likely knee-jerk into panic and anxiety. But there's abundant grace, too. And there's a choice to make -- will I stay there, in that place, or will I trust? Will I take this passage to heart?
I pray it will be so. And I am so thankful for friends who love me so much as to help me along the way.
1 comment:
Your post has prompted a truly amazing memory for me. I was torn up my first year of college--certain I was intended to go and be elsewhere, but not at all certain if the voice I heard was that of God or just a young woman who was having trouble finding her way. It was a hard, hard year for me; my journal shows this every step of the way. My dear friend, Alan, made a series of slips of paper that said, simply, "Trust." All different colors on simple white slips of paper. He wrote in a letter that they were for me to put wherever I needed them--and to this day, they are in a Bible of mine. As I now use a different Bible, I haven't run into them in awhile, but your post brought them right back, just when I was needing them! Thank you, thank you!
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