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Hard Places

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  Perhaps you are in one, perhaps it has been a while.  In between the hard places, I sort of forget how difficult they can be.  I sort of hope that maybe I have filled my quota and am done with them. 

 

 Mostly in a hard place I want out.  Move the clock forward.  Don’t make me walk the hard road.

 

Yet never am I so near the cross as I am in a  hard place.  The shaking down reveals what is so easy to hide from in the easy.  My finintenes.  My imperfection.  I have nothing to bring.  Only an incompleteness  and a longing to be filled. 

 

In a hard place I realize all I need and desire to be saved from,  and how wonderful it is to have a Savior.  In a hard place  I am amazed that He chose to save by taking flesh, which meant stepping into hard places.  We would have plenty to be grateful for had God saved us simply by deploying a rescue team to bring us out of our hopelessness.  He could have, it was after all up to Him to decide if and how and when we should be saved.  But to think He chose Himself as the Way should stop us in our tracks.  He became flesh and in doing so met us in the hard places from which we needed saving.  He knows what it is like to feel disappointed, heartbroken, forsaken, shaken down.  Whereas we despair when we are emptied, He chose to empty Himself in order to become the drink offering by which our thirst is quenched.  

 

I do wish the hard places were not so hard.  I do wish they were not so many, but I am grateful that He meets us in the hard places.  Grateful He promises not to leave us there.  Grateful His strength is sufficient for our weakness.  Grateful that His hardest place is what brought our salvation and He chose to walk it.  Grateful someday He will take us home where there are no hard places. 

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 Hard places are part of living in a fallen world.  Our hope is in the Love that provides a soft landing.  A landing that won’t break us when we fall on hard times, but will grow and shape us, and ultimately deliver us.  Lord draw us closer in the hard places. Help us to embrace them by inviting you into them.  Remind us that each passing day is one day closer to the day you take us home, and the hard places are no more.

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But as for me, I will look to the LORD; 

I will wait for the God of my salvation;  my God will hear me.    

 Micah 7:7