a rambling post on time and hurt and promises (perhaps with a couple of poems)

“…hurry up, God, if You please, and — I forgot.

Thy will be done.“

I seem to forget that

the Author of my story

spun a universe in six days, and

Adam’s bride in one.

Tell me I’m not the only one who tries to rush God…

I’ve started reading through the Old Testament chronologically again, and it’s incredible to me to see how God is not bound by time or hindered by the limits of human power and knowledge as we are.

Job spent nearly 40 chapters mourning and questioning and yet trusting God in the middle of a despair so deep that he wished he’d never been born…and in the 42nd chapter that Job never saw coming, God doubled his wealth and cheered his broken heart with more children.

Abraham, an elderly man with a wife who was barren, was promised what man deemed impossible when God told him, over and over again, that his descendants would be well-nigh impossible to count. Abraham clung to that promise for dear life, raising altars as visual reminders of that impossible promise…and in the end, he only lived long enough to see a glimpse of its fulfillment.

In Exodus we hear of how God provided manna in the wilderness to His hungry grumbling chosen ones. They called it manna (which basically means “what is it?”), and I find that intriguing because God’s provision was right there in front of them, looking nothing like what they had expected. When they realized what it was, they wanted to hoard and store it away for the days to come, but it rotted overnight…

And so they spent forty years surviving on God’s provision that looked nothing like what they had wanted or expected. They spent each day in the wilderness depending completely upon His mercy…

And how are we any different? God isn’t.

Can’t we, too, in our unspeakable pain, trust the Healer?

Can’t we, in our breathless impatience for miracles, trust the Maker and sustainer of time?

Can’t we, in our longing for more, trust the fulfillment of our desires to the Giver of all good gifts?

when I watch my dreams lie dying

while God’s healing others’ broken dreams,

give me the trusting heart of Jairus,

to open wide the door of my mourning soul

to the Master who tarried as

the light of my eyes slipped away.

(nothing…nothing is beyond His healing touch.)

And so, friends…here’s to trusting Him with each joy, each tear, each longing.

His shoulders are broader than yours and mine. ❤

Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev on Unsplash