Christianity Archives - Page 19 of 41

God Showed Up

The wind was a little wild this morning, and the clouds hung low. I peeked out from under my covers and saw a sliver of silver-gray daylight and the cedars dancing through the storm.

Today was the day God was going to show up.

We have been wandering up and down and all through this wilderness, going where we believe God has asked us to go, but the strain of it has nearly wasted me. The hills are steep and roll on one after another like waves so we can barely catch our breath on the way down before losing it again on the way back up.

Then, at what we hoped was the very end of the journey, we came to a river. We did not know there were going to be any rivers.

It was too wide to swim.

It was too deep to cross.

And we didn’t have a boat.

I stood on the shores of this great big river and I wanted to shout up to the heavens. “Why did you lead us here? We cannot cross here!”

Because it seemed a little personal, right then, when I had prickers in my socks and blisters on my toes. No one had said anything about rivers.

A few other people joined us on the shore and contemplated the water with us. “There might be a way to cross,” someone said.

My heart skipped over that little bit of hope.

“I think someone upstream has a boat.”

A little whisper came into my mind, “Have faith. God will show up.”

So we set up camp and we waited. We waited through one day, and another. It was dark in the night and it was dark in the day. I fought against the impossibility of crossing that little slip of water. Fat, salty tears dropped into the waves, and I ate too many of the frozen cream puffs someone sent over for consolation.

Surely there had to be a way! When was there not a way? For heaven’s sake, I could see the other side!

But there was no way the first day, and there was no way the second day.

This is a test of faith, I reasoned. Other people said it too, and we all nodded wisely and said faithful things and I stoked up my belief because this was going to work, this faith thing.

That is how we came to the third day. This day.

And God showed up.

But God said no.

Maybe it was a “not yet”–it’s hard to tell with God– but it wasn’t a “yes” and it certainly wasn’t a bridge or a boat or even a life vest. It wasn’t anything my faith could conjure up.

The river remained, wide and lapping at the shores. And we remained stranded with the great big wilderness behind us and the impervious waters before us and a God who said “no” and not much else.

But at least we were there with God.

And I thought to myself, on a grey day when the wind was wild and the cedars danced, that if all I have in this life is a great big wilderness and a river I can’t cross, it is enough if God is in the midst of it.

*This past week, my husband completed the long and arduous process of applying for Active Duty as an Army chaplain. His paperwork (which was lost once) was resubmitted on time. But due to a random computer error, his recruiter team was unable to submit his packet by the deadline. All attempts to fix the problem failed, even though they stayed up until 3 am working on it.

There was no boat.

But we are here at the shores of a great big river with a mighty God, and that is enough.

On Wings of Eagles

An eagle is soaring outside my kitchen window. I stand by the sink with my hands in the bubbles and I watch him, dark wings, flash of white, large against the clouds. Beneath him runs the water and the fields and a mile of sky, and above him is everything that cannot be contained by this earth.

His silhouette catches my eye in the blue of the day. Only an eagle has wings like that.

In wide, lazy circles he rides the thermals up into the atmosphere, up so high, I imagine he’s feeling the joy of his making in the presence of his maker.

I watch him as the dishwater grows tepid. Circle…circle…circle. Great counter-clockwise movements bring him up over my house where I can no longer see him and back out over the Puget Sound where surely other eyes are watching him too.

The eagle’s wings remain steady the entire time. He does not use any effort to stay up in the sky. In fact, his wings hardly move at all.

I wonder how long the eagle can soar without actually flying. The minutes pass.

One…two…three…

His tail feathers flick slightly for balance, and every once in a while, the eagle tilts his wings to keep from flying off into heaven. But he does not pump his wings even once.

With wet fingers, I flip through our bird book to the pages filled with beautiful raptors. I find out an eagle can fly 10,000 feet up in the air because he can spread out those great big wings and let the wind carry him up. He does not have to depend on his own strength to rise higher than all the other birds. He simply waits.

There’s probably a lesson in that for me.

I know in an instant I have been trying too hard. I have been muscling my way through this day, trying to make things happen because I forget that He is able.

Unexpected obstacles have thrown me off course. I have been beating my wings trying to catch up because it all seems so important and urgent

I am weary.

And I have not flown very high.

“Like a swallow, like a crane, so I twitter;

I moan like a dove;

My eyes look wistfully to the heights;

O Lord, I am oppressed, be my security.”

Is. 38:14

I am oppressed, yes, by my own fluttering. Those heights I long to reach? He is the one who must lift me there.

I long to soar like that.

Later that day, when the eagle had long since flown off, I crawl into bed with my Bible. Even with the reminder to wait, it has been a day of scrambling. “Pick a Psalm,” I say to my husband, “and I’ll read it to you while you get ready for bed.”

“Psalm 151,” he says.

“Oh, behave.”

He pokes his head around the bathroom door and smiles at me with a toothbrush in his teeth. “Okay, how about Psalm 147.”

I begin to read the ancient words and come to the ones the Spirit has been trying to speak to me all day.

“The Lord favors those who fear Him,

Who wait for His lovingkindess.”

Psalm 147:11

I stop and read them again, and Jeff looks at me. “Wow,” he says, because he knows how hard it has been to fly today and how much we have wanted God’s lovingkindness to come without much waiting.

My mind goes back to the eagle, and I remember how he soared without effort on wings I could not see. I knew why he was circling so high above my head. A bird of that size needs to eat, and often. But the eagle’s size makes hunting an exhausting ordeal. It simply cannot support itself in flight long enough to get the food it needs to survive.

But God knows what the eagle needs. He created it in such a way that its very search for sustenance is dependent on a power other than its own. The eagle must wait on the wind to be lifted up. And the wind does not fail.

When the eagle is most in need, it is most able to rest in the provision God has already made for it. It can search without growing tired, it can soar without growing weary.

Beautiful words float into my head, words I know better than to have forgotten.

“Even youths grow weary and tired,

And young men stumble and fall,

But those who wait for the LORD will renew their strength;

They will mount up with wings like eagles,

They will run and not grow weary,

They will walk and not faint.”

Is. 40:30-31

Oh, to trust it to be true!

But today is a new day, and my hunger and need is just as real as it was yesterday. Only today, I am keeping my heart and mind on the One who can sustain me through my need.

Hanging Out in the Hallway

It has been nearly a year since my husband came home from work and told me the private school where he had taught for five years was downsizing and he would not have a job in the fall. It has been nearly a year of waiting, praying for open doors, flinching when doors shut, and trying to remain faithful instead of fearful.

But it has also been a year of beautiful provision, of seeing the hand of God in the embrace of friends. We have been well-loved, and whenever I begin to feel like I am just another face in the crowd, someone flashes a smile at me and I remember I am treasured. I am known.

It gets me every time and brings me to my knees. I am so prone to doubt. I quickly grow weary in the waiting. But God provides for me still, independent of my trust in Him. A stranger in a checkout lane presses a five-dollar bill into my hand and tells the children to pick out a candy bar. My husband’s former principal decides to include him in part of the staff Christmas bonus even though Jeff no longer works there. I receive a check in the mail from someone who hardly knows me but was told by my Daddy to take care of me.

I am reminded that I am a child, a sheep, a prodigal, but God’s love for me is audacious and unfaltering.

You’d think I would know that by now, but it takes the breath right out of me. It has been a year of living in the lavish love of God, and still it amazes me.

But it has also been a year of hanging out in the hallway, and I wonder why I still get my fingers pinched in the doors that close. It all comes from sticking my fingers where they don’t belong, I suppose.

Still, I wonder, why God has to shut doors so hard. Maybe it’s because I have a habit of trying to force open the doors that shut. I’m not very good at hanging out in the hallway. I’m anxious to find a place to belong again.

So with trembling hearts we come to another door and wonder if this is the one that will open. Jeff is in the final steps of applying for Active Duty chaplaincy with the Army. He has been a reserve chaplain for well over a year and has found that it suits him very well. He loves being in the field with his “congregation,” serving the men and women who serve our country. It is a joy to see him enjoying the opportunity to pastor in a most unexpected way.

It has been a long journey, though, and an exhausting one. The application process to the military is an unending pile of paperwork and appointments. For months, he’s been hard at work at it, and we’re just about to the end. Tuesday, he has an interview with the senior chaplain at Ft. Lewis. Then, in mid-April, a board will review Jeff’s application and decide whether he’s in. Or not.

And there is the nagging question of whether this is where God wants us at all. It seems like it, but on the other hand, we love the local church. Perhaps God is calling us to love a little congregation somewhere, or join a church-planting team that focuses on planting churches near military bases around the world.

Or perhaps the chaplaincy is right where God wants us. It seems so, and our hearts have begun to hope so. We’re about to test the door to find out.

Most days, I’m excited because we’re running out of places where God does not want us. It stands to reason that pretty soon, we’re going to find a place to walk through.

But then, the fear seizes me at unexpected times. I want to be wanted. I want my husband to be able to use his gifts and be able to minister according to his calling. I do not want to hear another no. It’s easy to talk a big about faith but when the months roll on and on and the answers come in words that make me feel inadequate and unwanted, I falter. Help me, Jesus.

Will you pray with us? Even in my fear, I do not want to go where God is not leading. I would rather have a closed door than an easy path where God is not. Pray that I will remain faithful and steadfast in the waiting. Pray for God to lead and thank Him for provision. We are blessed, indeed, because we are not lacking. We are dwelling in the lavish love of Christ.

Even if it’s in the hallway.

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