Yesterday I ran in the rain. It seemed only fitting.
I’m burdened for a precious friend who is beyond my ability to help. She is suffering. It’s terribly difficult to watch someone suffer. The landscape feels dark, dreary, and cold.
I don’t want to offer words to her that come from intellect. I don’t want to muster up some type of “fair weather speech.” I can only offer hope in the Lord. I trust in His faithfulness with all my heart. I will not lean on my own understanding. (Prov 3:5-6) I encourage her to do the same.
Why? Because He is the author of hope and He loves her. He loves my friend whose suffering. He is already at work.
Many questions have been lifted. The path ahead is unknown. We are asking for God to give faith to trust in His way and the eyes to see the path.
The thing is…I don’t know how He will come through. Only that He will. And so, as you can imagine, there are times of silence. Times where I just sit and listen and hope along with my loved one for God’s rescue, for His mercy.
God is so mysterious. I have often time, in my despair, gone to Him and asked Him to work in my circumstances the only way my mind can comprehend, thinking surely if God loves me He will do this. Then to my surprise, He answers in a way I was not expecting, a way I could not see. Sometimes He has bypassed the external (allowing my circumstances to remain the same) and done a work solely in the deepest part of me. In those times even my afflictions could not touch me or steal my hope and joy. Joy mixed with Pain. I’ve been there and I have felt loved and protected in my Father’s arms.
And so, I sit here in the quietness of the morning pleading for my loved one…knowing better than to dictate my requests to God. His ways are higher than my ways, and His thoughts higher than my thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9 To be honest, in this difficult time I don’t even know how to dictate a prayer. The only word I can muster is “HELP!”
God encouraged my heart through the passage I read in the Psalms this morning. David knew what it was like to not have any more words…when all the prayers you know to pray have been said.
“For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.” Psalm 62:1 ESV
I sat here thinking about the silence. I usually wake before the sun. And sitting here in the dark living room with my laptop, and no words left to be said, I look for the sun to break on the horizon. I know it will. It always does. The light will come. And so I wait.
Psalm 62 is filled with great words of hope.
Psalm 62:1-2; 5-12a
1For God alone my soul waits in silence;
from him comes my salvation.
2He alone is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken.
5For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
for my hope is from him.
6He only is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
7On God rests my salvation and my glory;
my mighty rock, my refuge is God.
8Trust in him at all times, O people;
pour out your heart before him;
God is a refuge for us. Selah
9Those of low estate are but a breath;
those of high estate are a delusion;
in the balances they go up;
they are together lighter than a breath.
10Put no trust in extortion;
set no vain hopes on robbery;
if riches increase, set not your heart on them.
11Once God has spoken;
twice have I heard this:
that power belongs to God,
12 and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love.
As I type, the sun is breaking. Light has come. It’s a promise of the hope I have in Christ. It’s the hope I offer to a friend in the dark. “Look to the horizon, the Son is coming.” As Psalm 62 says, “all power and unfailing love belongs to Him.” He is working. And even though my finite mind cannot yet comprehend the depth of the hope He is dispensing…I will wait for it in silence.
Susan Kersey - Praise God! He walks with us in the “shadows.” Our hope is in the promise of eternity in sickness and in health.