I heard the rumble and shout of a train hastening down the tracks alongside US 60 on my way to work this morning. The train announcing he’s coming through. Make way. Watch out. He’s not stopping.
2022 has been a train barreling down the tracks for me. My baby boys have become men and the empty nest has moved into my world, full steam ahead, whether I’m ready or not.
I told God the other day, “I wasn’t prepared for this! I didn’t pray about this! I don’t know what to do with this!”
Life is passing me by, horns honking, like traffic, while I sit at the light that turned green awhile back.
The good news is, I’m paying attention. God’s got my ears tuned like an owl to the sonar pulse answering his, “Whoo, whoo.” And he’s got my tears- a window display of colored glass bottles full of salty prayers.
The train of time chugs away, and I keep praying, waiting, watching, listening.
I took a long walk with my German Shephard, Lukas, this evening. The sun is setting earlier. The sky glows with shades of orange and pink and the world seems to cover itself with a honey-kissed filter. I’m drawn out of the house easily on these fall evenings in the Sonoran desert.
Usually I take Lukas down our suburban neighborhood streets, earbuds in, podcast or audio bible or audio book, but tonight, I walked in silence. I listened. I noticed how much I wanted to hear something. Something meaningful. Something insightful. Something I could write or share that might give another struggling soul, courage. But I heard nothing. Nothing but the sound of my steps pressing gravel into the earth. I heard kids playing in the alleyway, hollering to each other working out the rules to the game they were playing. I heard the swoosh and vroom of cars and trucks and motorcycles driving down the main road around the corner. I caught myself reaching for my phone. Wanting to scroll to find some Yoda-like tweet or inspiring instagram story.
As I walked home, noticing the changing colors in the darkening sky, accepting the noises of dusk in Phoenix, Arizona suburbs, I thought about how the daily activities of life fill my days and I very rarely accept silence.
I have no special insight to publish tonight. No word from God. No inspirational quotes.
I don’t like a lot of my circumstances. I long for God to do something new in the lives of those I love, in my own life. But tonight I’ll just quietly wait. And walk. And listen. And pray.
There comes a time in every mom‘s life when her kids don’t need her to tend to their physical needs anymore. They don’t need her the same way they did when she held them in her lap.
A time comes when circumstances are such that you don’t have control.
You’re not the planner. You’re not the maker. You’re not the organizer. Or the one doing the serving or the leading.
There comes a time when you just have to rest. You have to take a walk and trust that God, who you cannot see, is working the circumstance- leading, doing.
You have to sabbath. Rest. Cease working. Cease striving. Cease planning. Cease trying to make things better.
Motherhood is teaching me about sabbath. Covid-19 is teaching me about sabbath. Saturday in Holy Week is teaching me about sabbath.
Resting is not what I want to do. Especially when fearful and hard circumstances come.
When the choices are not yours to make anymore. When your son lies behind a stone and the church doors are closed. When you can’t hold the one you love and or tend to his needs.
Your weary body and mind finally collapse, and you rest.
There you realize, God has been trying to lay you down in this green pasture so you can watch him rise like the sun over the stone cold earth.
“The women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.” Luke 23:55-56
For the Christian, hope is a rescue. And it is a promise sealed in the blood of Christ. But 2000 years downstream from that cleansing flow, and 2000 years into more human suffering and depravity, heck, just 44 years into a life and I start to ask with the Psalmist, “How long O Lord?” And, “Why have you forgotten me?” The sufferings and trials of life make you look at what you’re hoping in and ask yourself, over and over again, “What is my hope again?”
The thing is, as a Christian, the circumstances in life that test your hope, cause you to find it to be very much alive and even stronger because of the pain of life.
Romans 5:3-5 says, “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Do you see the progression?
Sufferings produce endurance,
endurance produces character,
character produces hope,
and we aren’t ashamed of our hope because something living is going on in us.
The Holy Spirit is in us.
God’s love is in us.
And it’s growing in suffering.
Hope is alive, and he’s living in us!
1 Peter 1:3 puts it this way:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith–more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire–may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory…
Forty-four years ago I was born in sin. From infancy, in me was growing lying, hiding, blaming and pride day by day. But at age sixteen I was born again in a living hope. And from that day, I have been growing in genuine faith in Christ, even as I’m test by various trials.
I’ve never seen this Jesus, this living hope that made me alive when I was 16, but I love him. God’s love has been poured out into my heart. And though I can’t see him, and at times I cry, “Where are you?! Don’t you see me?! How long till I can see you?!” somehow in the midst of all the hard things there’s this sweet joy I just can’t explain.
Hope is alive, and he lives in me. No hard thing in life can’t kill that hope.
Sheila Dougal 