What Do You Expect?

I think it's safe to say that this year hasn't gone the way any of us had expected. So many plans have been cancelled, events have been postponed or called off altogether, and our daily lives have been upended. Even as things begin to open up again, things change so suddenly and so frequently, it's hard to make any plans at all. Never before has my generation of Christians (at least in the United States) been forced into such a literal practice of James 4:13-15.

"Go to now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that"

I don't know about you, but it's hard to hold loosely to my plans and expectations about the future, let alone my plans and expectations of what today will look like. Yet, the Bible clearly teaches that we cannot expect things to go as we planned. Honestly, we can't even expect them not to go as we planned.

So, what can we expect?

I ran across Psalm 62:5 this morning. "My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from Him"

We wait upon God when we keep our eyes focused on Him, waiting humbly for Him to unfold His will for our lives. It is a moment-by-moment seeking of God, looking for His hand at work, holding our plans on open palms instead of tightly-clenched fists. To wait upon God is to expect only that whatever He does will be done for our good. It is to rest in the knowledge of God's goodness.

The rest of Psalm 62:5 mentions some things we can always expect of God:

• He will be our source of salvation and deliverance v.7
• He will be the only object worthy of our glorying in v.7
  
• He will be our source of strength v.7
• He will be our refuge v.7
• He will be trustworthy v.8
• He will be attentive to our prayers v.8
• He will be omnipotent v.11
• He will be merciful v.12
• He will be just v.12
  

In a world where we don't know what will happen next, we can confidently expect that God will still be God; unchanging, good, and sovereign over all creation!

When God Thins Your Garden

God periodically takes me through seasons when He seems to remove my close friends. It may be that they get married or have kids, or move away, or simply become too busy to spend time with me. This invariably coincides with some time off, and I end up racking my brain to try to think of a friend to come over or to go on a trip with me, only to realize that there's no one left.

During those times, it can feel like I've been forgotten, left out, or left behind. But the reality is that God is doing a purposeful work.

It's a bit like a garden. You see, a good gardener plants his (or her) seeds, and then lets them grow up together until they need more room. Then, the gardener will uproot some of the plants and transplant them or discard them to give the seedlings that are left more room to grow.

That is what God does with us. He sometimes removes a friend we've been growing alongside in order to give us both more room to grow.

I can look back at those seasons when God has "thinned" my garden patch and see how God has used the absence of friends to help me grow stronger and closer to Him in ways I never would have otherwise. My friends are a help, certainly, but they can also become a distraction, and I think sometimes God wants to clear away the people I lean on so that I have no other option but to learn to lean fully on Him. 

Seasons of thinning can be lonely, and naturally so, since we were designed for fellowship. But in those lonely times, we can take comfort in the fact that God has allowed these limitations for a good purpose. Our loneliness reminds us to seek His face, to learn that His presence is enough for this season. After all Romans 8:28 applies to the seasons of  "thinning" just as much as it does to the seasons when we are surrounded by friends. As Elisabeth Elliot once stated, "God never does anything to us that isn't for us."*

We are not forgotten, we are not left out, we are not left behind. God has merely cleared some space for us to grow. The thinning is not a punishment, but a blessing, if we will only yield to God's purpose in it and look to Him for comfort and peace.

And remember, each season of life is just that: a season. We are simply to accept each one as it comes, trusting that God knows what He is doing.

"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end." (Jeremiah 29:11)

*Elisabeth Elliot, Be Still My Soul: Reflections on Living the Christian Life. Revell: Grand Rapids, 2003. p. 27

A Sinless Response to Suffering

This week I began reading through the book of Job in my time with God, as I do at least once every year. It's amazing to me just how rich a book this is, and how often it gets overlooked by Christians who label it as one of the "hard" books, right up there with Leviticus and Ecclesiastes. I won't say it's necessarily easy to read 37 chapters of anguish of soul, but there is so much for us to learn about God and our own trials through this account of Job's experiences. 

This time, as I read through the first two chapters, I was struck by what God said about Job's response to suffering. 

God allowed Satan to test Job's faithfulness by taking away all he had: livestock, servants, wealth, and, worst of all, his children. He was left with just his wife and the three servants who had escaped to bring Job word of what had happened.

Think about the enormity of his loss.

Now look at his response:

"Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." (1:20-21)

First, he acknowledged his grief. He rent his clothes and shaved his head, as was customary in the culture of the day. But then, in his grief, he fell down upon the ground and worshipped. 

He acknowledged God's right to take what He had given Job in the first place. He did not blame God, he did not even ask why. He just surrendered to God's will. 

And then he praised God. 

What a remarkable thing to do. I don't know if I would think to praise God in light of such grief and loss, but that is what Job did. And lest we think he was somehow harmfully repressing his emotions, look at God's view of Job's response:

"In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly." (1:22)

Job sinned not.

Right there, in the midst of a magnitude of loss most people will never even come close to experiencing, Job responded sinlessly. He did not blame God, he did not argue with God. He simply accepted what God had allowed and chose to praise Him in the midst of his grief. Though Job was a sinner, just like you and I, this was one thing God said he did right.

But Job's testing was not over: Satan again accused Job before God, this time citing Job's health as the source of his faithfulness to God. So God in His wisdom --and yes, in His goodness, too-- allowed Satan to bring upon Job an ailment that would cause constant and intense suffering. Then, in the midst of his physical and emotional agony, his own wife tells him to "curse God, and die." Supportive, huh?

This was Job's response to her:

"What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" (2:10)

This response shows Job's unshakable commitment to the truth that God has the right to do whatever He deems best. How ungrateful we are to eagerly take His blessings, only to complain when He allows them to be removed, as if they were ours all along!

I'm reminded of a quote from Anne of Green Gables, where Marilla tells Anne, "God does not want you for a fair-weather friend". 

When suffering comes, it is easy to focus on the trial, seeing nothing but darkness around us, but Job's response shows us that when darkness surrounds us, when pain engulfs us from every direction, we can look up and find peace of heart in knowing that God is in control. 

God approves of this response as well: "In all this did not Job sin with his lips." (10)

The sinless response to suffering is to look up, acknowledge God's sovereignty, and trust His unchanging goodness. It is to surrender to God's will, and to praise Him, not just in spite of, but because of what He has given and taken away. In short, it is to trust Him.

 Fully. Completely. Stubbornly. 

Trust Him. 

"Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy."

James 5:11

This is the day: Dealing with Disappointment Part 2

My last post dealt with the reality of the feelings of disappointment and loss so many of us are experiencing right now. It also acknowledged that those feelings are natural, but that they should not be allowed to define our existence. No matter what is happening, we can still live in hope, knowing that God has good things still to come for us. There will always be something to praise Him for.

If you haven't read the post yet, click here.

Now, dealing Biblically with disappointment isn't a one-time-fix-all event. Satan loves to remind us of the things we have lost or missed out on, and if he can get our eyes fixed back on our disappointment, he can destroy the peace and joy God wants us to have.

Case in point: my planner. When looked at those squares full of all the things that were supposed to be going on this week, I couldn't help but be reminded of the enjoyable parts of the week I would be missing out on.

But then, I stopped pouting, took a breath, and realized that instead of bracing myself for another long day of teaching followed by a long night of  ministry and responsibilities, only to repeat the cycle the next day with even less sleep, I was in my kitchen, peacefully making myself a cup of coffee before sitting down to read a book. Yes, much has been cancelled, but I had to thank the Lord for changing my week from exhausting to restful.

Psalm 118:24 says:

"This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." 

This week, those first four words stood out to me like never before. This is the day. This one. This day, with all its changes from what I had expected it to be, this is the day God planned for me to live. Not that other day I had written out in my planner, but this one. I shouldn't be moping over the day that God allowed not to happen; I should instead be rejoicing in the day He has allowed. And do you know why?


Because He is good.

You might be getting tired of hearing me say that, but everywhere I look, whatever topic I write about, it always seems to boil down to this: we can trust Him, for He is good. It doesn't matter if we think He is being good, or whether we can see His hand working good things in our situation, He is still good. And if we can just get our eyes fixed on that truth, all fear, disappointment, loss, anger, grief, --all of it melts away when we choose to agree with the truth that God is good.

So, I choose to rejoice in today, thanking God for His goodness and trusting His plan. --After all,

"This is the day which the Lord hath made"

I Shall Yet Praise Him: Dealing with Disappointment

I got out my planner this week. --You know, those books we used to use to write down all the things we were going to do? I haven't looked at mine since March.

Filling the squares of the calendar for this next week were event after event, responsibility after responsibility. It would have been the busiest week of the school year for me, with something going on every night as well as a writing conference all day Saturday. I remember feeling overwhelmed as I wrote in all the things I needed to remember to do that week, taking a deep breath at the recollection of how exhausted I usually am by the end of that week each year.

Yet at the same time, I looked forward to the excitement of the school year drawing to a close, to the bustle of preparation for the graduations and for the festivities of the last week of school to follow. I looked forward to all the new things I would be teaching my students during each of those school days, even if I would be tired from the long string of late nights. All those happy and exciting things almost made up for the stress and exhaustion of the week.

But now, as I look at the busy days that were to signal the final push towards end of the school year and the beginning of a new focus on writing for the summer, There's a lot to be disappointed about. Added to all that was the news I received this week of the cancellation of the four-day writer's contest I was going to attend in August. That and the one-day spring conference which would have been this week were like the two bookends of my summer, and with both of them cancelled, the disappointment seems complete.

However...

Looking at that planner, I was reminded of the verses in James which say: "Go to, now, ye that say, Today or tomorrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that." (James 4:13-15)

It is natural to be disappointed when things we had so looked forward to are cancelled, opportunities are lost, or vacation time seemingly squandered by the necessity to stay home. I think everyone has at least one major thing they are mourning over right now, and it isn't wrong to feel disappointed.

It is wrong to stay there, though.

You have probably heard this example many times, but don't let familiarity rob you of its truth: While David was running from Saul (who was trying to kill him, even though he hadn't done anything wrong), he and his band of men had been living in the city of Ziklag with their wives and children. I won't belabor the background, but David's little army returned home to find that the city had been burned and all their wives and children had been taken captive.

Disappointing, right? Here they were, probably looking forward to some rest and time with their families, only to find that everything important had been taken away. This was even more devastating to David, because the men began to blame him, even to the point of wanting to kill him in revenge for what had happened!

So how did David deal with this mixture of disappointment, loss, and fear? he"encouraged himself in the Lord his God." (1 Sam. 30:6)

I don't know when Psalm 42 was written, or even if David was the one who penned it, but it expresses exactly how we should respond to disappointment, grief, and loss:

"Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God; for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance." (Psalm 42:11)

Throughout this psalm, the psalmist is honest with God about what he is feeling, even to the point of asking why God has forgotten him, but then he reminds himself of the wonderful truth "I shall yet praise Him". In the midst of sorrow, loss, and disappointment, the psalmist didn't lose track of the truth that now is not all there is. Even without Romans 8:28, he knew that God could be trusted, and that there would again be reason to praise Him, no matter how bleak he felt at that moment. That was the hope he clung to.


Whatever is happening, whatever you are missing, God knows. Invite Him into your disappointment, and see how He reminds you of the truth that it's not over, that He has good things planned for you that cannot be cancelled.