What do you do when you feel angry, impotent and stuck, in a place where evil seems invincible and justice, impossible? Be still? Wait patiently? Psalm 37:7 may seem like a call to “just relax.” Instead it affirms and encourages struggle – struggle to resist taking matters into your own hands, struggle to cooperate with Christ to birth deliverance and life.
In the very act of seeing what is brown, murky and decidedly unsafe, there’s movement. There’s life. And the light is breaking through.
This is a plea not to suppress anger and grief in such a way that they morph into something malevolent. It’s a call to recognize such malevolence in someone else when it is turned against you. ♥️
It feels wonderful to find yourself waiting in quiet hope and encouraging others to do the same. It feels dreadful to seek the God you thought you knew while hope continues to hide. It feels like a betrayal on God’s part, or a failure on yours, or both.
Fifteen years ago, I began a journey of awakening. The end of that journey exposed the beginning of my life. At long last, I saw the hard-to-face realities and easy-to-embrace fantasies in my childhood that led to everything else.
God identifies himself as Defender of the forsaken. This same God counts it crucial that his people defend the cause of those who are easiest to abuse.
Long ago and far away, God promised a scattered people, “I will be a sanctuary to you during your time in exile,” and, “I will gather you back.”
When my father came home after his second bypass surgery, we did not expect what happened next.
Now, at last, my mom is getting to experience what a newborn should experience. But it didn't have to look like this. It didn't have to end where it should have begun, with the middle of the story lost in the chaos of trying again and again to rewrite the start.
