In my own, human understanding, I would have only seen the sorrow and pain, the upheaval and change and desperately clenched my fists against it all. At that time, I could not have imagined that I would find anything good in any of it.
Sometimes it's only in the living through of something we thought we never could accept...that we learn to receive.
That word "receive" has come into my mind a lot recently. Over the past couple months, I've been visiting Isaiah chapter 30 where I find a parallel to my own life in Israel's refusal to receive help from God. In this passage, He directly confronts them for carrying out a plan that is not His, making an alliance that is not of His Spirit, and going down to Egypt without asking for His direction, to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh. He warns them that "Egypt's help is worthless and empty," but they are "children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord." They "despise this word" and would rather "trust in oppression and perverseness and rely on them." After His rebuke, He gives them this beautiful promise: "In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength." But they are still unwilling to receive His salvation, and so He declares to them that they will flee away with swift pursuers following behind them.
Harsh-sounding words, perhaps. But this is the God who saved them from Egypt and made the Israelites His very own people. ...And now, they are looking to Egypt and Pharaoh for salvation, trading their true Savior for an illusion and lie.
But then He trumpets forth this gracious truth: "Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore He exalts Himself to show mercy to you."
And this story of Israel's rebellion, refusal, running, and final receiving in the end, falls heavy on my heart because it is my story. I have tried other saviors. Believe me, I have. Daily I attempt to do things on my own, apart from Him. Hourly I consult the enemy and seek wisdom and salvation in his lies. I do this when I worry, strive, harden my heart...essentially trying to take matters into my own hands. I choose to trust my flesh and satan over the One who saved me from both by His blood and made me His very own. And when I find that all of it fails, I turn again in desperation to Him...and find Him there, waiting to be gracious to me...waiting to show His mercy to me.
In His graciousness, He waits until I can receive His help. And then He calls me, not to wallow in self-condemnation, but to return and rest. To open my hands and receive. He tells me, "Yes, much is lost when you strive on your own and believe in false gods, but here, we start again. I am the God of new beginnings. Get up and keep dancing. Take My hand and walk with Me. You are Mine."
These past few months, I've journeyed through a few things that I never would have asked for. But I can look back and say with all honesty, that God has not just gotten me through it. Instead, I have seen His goodness all the more through it all. In the hard times, He has begun to soften my heart and open my hands, so that I can receive Him in ways I didn't before. Not one drop of pain, sorrow, or struggle has been wasted. And when I consider that I don't even see the full picture of His redemption now, but that more will be revealed as time goes on and throughout all of eternity? I am astounded.
A few last thoughts... Yesterday I was rereading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (it never gets old!) and this prophecy about Aslan renewed my hope and joy:
"Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again."
One day, the sorrows and troubles of this world will be blown away like chaff...and then we shall see the gold underneath...the eternal weight of glory that was being worked out for us...in us. We will behold it in all its fullness. The sadness and struggles and hard, dark nights all will have run their course and produced in us what they were meant to produce. Then there will be no more need of them* and what is left behind, their mark on us, will astonish us all.
Until that day, may we live in hope and joy, always anticipating the arrival of our one and only true Savior.
*inspired by Far Kingdom by the Gray Havens