It’s so easy to forget there is a bigger context to what we see happening in our circumstances.
It’s not surprising because we are human. That reality is both sacred and problematic (from a human perspective.) We long to be delivered from the confusion and chaos. They often feel like powerful waves overwhelming our physical and emotional capacities to keep our heads above water. It can be exhausting, especially when we feel we are running out of energy to keep treading water.
God sees us. Our circumstances don’t have the last word.
This is God’s Message, the God who made earth, made it livable and lasting, known everywhere as God: ‘Call to me and I will answer you. I’ll tell you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own.’ Jeremiah 33:3
Jeremiah knew the tension between trusting God and the physical/emotional toll a broken world takes on our bodies.
I’m doubled up with cramps in my belly—
a poker burns in my gut.
My insides are tearing me up,
never a moment’s peace. Jeremiah 4:19
But, he also held on tightly to God’s promises as told to him directly as well as through the stories he knew from his Jewish public narrative. Life changing stories repeated through generations that become a rope to pull you up. Because when you feel as though you are on the edge of succumbing to the waves of grief and despair , you hang onto them with all your might.
Like Jeremiah, we are reminded that:
God restores
God delivers
God sees us
God gives us glimpses of the life giving work in progress
Cole Arthur Riley, in her book This Here Flesh reminds us that “There is no such thing as a lone wail. Every howl reverberates off the walls of God’s chest and finds its way back to us, carrying his own tears with it.”
Let us cling to what may feel like the thinnest threads of rope of trust as we encounter those rough waters. God is calling us to hold on.
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