I have been standing
Standing on this spot forever
I don’t seem progressive
I don’t seem regressive
I am ‘just’ on my feet
Sometimes on my knees
Grateful I’m not on my butt.
Another thing that news of falling away brethren leaves with me is this overwhelming sense of gratitude. My life is far from perfect and I’m not always as thankful as I should be. Sometimes, I get carried away by all I’m dealing with. Sometimes I have wondered how true, how real, how close is this God to me? Questions arise to which I find no answers. Issues emerge for which there are no obvious solutions. God sometimes appears silent, absent, even aloof in the face of adversities.
Daily, every one of us will find reasons to go our way, do our things and not bother about God and eternity. “Let me worry for myself and loved ones, let God worry for Himself.” I doubt that there is one believer who hasn’t doubted, who hasn’t wandered in their wonderings, who hasn’t wrestled with unanswered questions, who hasn’t juggled the puzzles of irreconcilable realities with God. For some of us, it’s once in a while. For some others, it is an everyday battle.
One of those times for me was after I lost two very important people in my life. How could God sit back and let me go through this? How can a loving God let our hearts break this much, this often? He can do anything and everything. He could have done something about this. Why did He choose not to? Why couldn’t He have saved at least one for me? How am I supposed to even believe He is, that He knows, that He cares? How do I reconcile that He can do something about such losses and immeasurable pains and still chooses not to? Not even for me given how close we are, for them or for any of the others affected? If He didn’t save them, what is the guarantee that I am safe?
In that shadowed valley, I sat back and reviewed all I’ve been through in the name of God; all my losses…, and still God couldn’t do this for me? Is this faith even worth all we bear and lose? Does God truly exist or are we deceiving ourselves? Is He really in control or am l like everyone and everything else out there, subject to life’s sporadic shots with no coverage apart from what I can garner? I suppose we all have such times of reflections that could draw us into deeper relationships or lure us away from God, and from everyone and thing associated with Him.
It could be one major tragedy or series of events over time that pushes us into that valley where faith is redeemed or drowned. I’m not a big fan of Amplified Bible version but it hits my rescue Scripture right on the head: “If we who are [abiding] in Christ have hoped only in this life [and this is all there is], then we are of all people most miserable and to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19). Life is not easy and God didn’t say believing will make it easier. He rather promised to be there with us, for us and by us. His help is promised until the very end. How we perceive and receive it may vary but it is our choice to keep believing, to hang on until the end.
To be continued.
Glory!