What do you do when your life is balanced on a fulcrum? Any slight movement, any external force can push you over, send you tumbling down. A needle-thin single dot is all you stand on. At the moment that’s where we are as a family. We are on this side of a decision that rests in someone else’s hands. And in that decision is life or death.
I usually go into a post with some idea, some praise or thanksgiving to offer, some truth to unpack and process. I don’t have that right now. I have praise for my Savior, I have a heart full of love for Him, and I am looking forward to the day when all of this pain and misery and decay is forever behind us. But that day is not today.
What do you do when you just want to give up? When it seems like you’ve been climbing uphill, dodging everything from pebbles to planet-sized boulders that are heaved in your way. How do you encourage the one next to you who feels this more than you do? Who feels that no matter what they do, nothing will work.
Hope unrealized moves to anger quickly. Proverbs says “hope deferred makes the heart sick,” and I see that more clearly at this very moment than I believe I ever have. I think about hope, and a line of a song starts running through my mind that says “all my hope is in You.” I have to ask myself, is it? Is all my hope in Jesus? Is all the hope of my loved ones in Jesus?
I want it to be. I want to say with absolute certainty that I hope in Him with everything I am. I know, sitting on this side of that life-or-death decision, that it could go either way. I know that the answer could be no and someone I love, someone many people love, could and probably will lose their life. So it seems that my hope, the hope of others, may be resting on that decision. Or maybe it’s whether we get to have hope rests in that decision. Because if the decision is no, we have very little hope left.
I know that the God I serve is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. But I also know that I have prayed, and will pray again, for His Kingdom to come, His will to be done on earth as it is in Heaven. What if a “yes” answer is not His will? What if there are things He needs to teach us, things He knows we need to walk through in order to be the vessel He has created us to be?
I think one of the hardest things for me to accept is injustice, unfairness. I’ve written before that I have a great big “that’s not fair!” button. To me, unfairness is standing in a glass box where I can hear everything that’s going on around me, but no one can hear me. And I’m screaming and beating my hands bloody on those glass walls, but everyone else goes on about their business like I’m not there. In that box I’m invisible. With my finite understanding, my limited human brain, that’s what I see right now. I see us balancing on the fulcrum of a teeter-totter and a boulder of injustice is hanging over one end, a hair’s breadth away from tipping us over.
While I wouldn’t and don’t wish this misery on anyone else in the world, I’m thankful to know that we are not alone in the way we feel. We are not the only ones who have ever experienced this. And the feelings we have, the misery, the unfairness, the dwindling hope, the burgeoning anger, the questions and cries in the night, can all be felt and expressed to our faithful Father without fear of reprisal. I’m thankful at this moment for those who have questioned Him and whose pain is recorded in Scripture. I’m thankful that I’m not the only one who has cried “that’s not fair!” to God.
I’m thankful that He hears us, He feels our pain, He commiserates and mourns with us. I’m thankful that Jesus the Christ has experienced life as a human in this fallen world, and as such is a faithful High Priest who sympathizes with our weaknesses because He has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. He felt, He cried, He mourned, He loved, He bled, and He died. He accepted the injustice thrust upon Him. He endured the shame, because He loved us. No one knows injustice the way He does, because He is just.
I’m scared right now. I’m afraid of a “no” answer. I’m afraid of what a “no” will do to the hearts and minds of my loved ones. But I know that He is still God, and He is still good, even if the answer is no.
Freedom In Christ 