So…the surgery that I prepared for and processed for two years didn’t work. It took several weeks, but I’ve made my peace with it. Now, I wait on the Lord again. Waiting for my next step. Meeting with new doctors. Traveling. Listening. Processing.
I recently spent some time with a cousin full of life and smiles and in the same morning found out another cousin took his life under the weight of disheartening news. So much of life feels like it’s lived in the shadows. In the gap between a Friday death and a Sunday resurrection. It can be maddening. It can be lonely. The shadows can be blinding.
Back when I was a 20-year-old Bible college student, I answered phone calls on the prayer line. It was my student ministry, and it taught me more than most of the books. The thing I remember repeating most was: Jesus didn’t promise to take the storms out of life, He promised to hold our hand as we walk through them. That sentence held a whole short lifetime of meaning then but not as much as it does now after living a couple more decades. I’d love it if He did take the storms out of life…if every shadowy place was completely lit up. If we could know the fullness of heaven on earth right now.
There comes a point when all believers have to make peace with Good Friday. When we sit in the tension and feel the suffering before skipping to the victory. There comes a point when we all have to pass on understanding and choose the God that always holds our hand. The God that is the King of our victories but also the Servant that suffers with us. We have to decide if the pain of our experiences and our unanswered prayers are going to reduce all we’ve known Him to be…all we know Him to still be. It’s a very gray place to sit, but there is comfort in knowing that our Jesus sat there too. He asked for the cup of death to be taken from Him, but He chose His Father’s will instead. For the joy set before Him, He sat in the gap and chose us.
The Father has a will set before you and me too. We were “created in Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). On my hardest days, I remind myself that the fact I’m alive means He still has good works for me to do, good works that must not be contingent on a full voice. Vision for those works keeps me going. It gives me purpose because the Savior that knows the difficulty of living holds my hand as I work. In the walking and working through storms, I experience a greater participation with Him, and any shadowy place I find myself in is overshadowed by the cross He chose. It becomes His banner of love over me. I stand in its shadow…knowing the suffering but looking toward the victory. Having done all to stand…standing still and not standing alone. That is everything