Too Deep Too Long

 

One of my best friends recently told me she's now operating from the assumption that there is no God.  If she were not one of the ones who prayed me through the pain of losing my daughter, if she were not one of the ones with whom I've shared so many "But why God?" questions, if she were not one of the ones who has who's life has been a testimony of God's faithfulness in the midst of trials, that would be one thing.  But she is all of those things, so for her to tell me that if there is a God, He has failed her one too many times so she can't operate from believing in Him anymore, it rocked my world.

 

People say that worry is wasted time because most of the things you worry about never happen, and why worry when you can pray?    

 

But sometimes the things you worry about do happen.  Sometimes you come face to face with the reality that the things you have prayed about and told God you can't handle, He feels you can.

 

Sometimes the pain is too deep for too long.  What then?  Where is God when we're low on faith and short on answered prayer?  Where is He when the enemy wedges a foot of doubt in the door of our hearts?  And how then?  How do we reach Him?  How do we carry our friends on their beds of affliction to the Master they haven't the strength to seek, and who, who will carry us?  

 

Even in the darkness we operate by faith in the assumption that God is, and that He not only is, but He is all the Goodness, and Glory and Justice and Light He claims to be.  This side of Heaven there is pain, and sometimes it runs too deep for too long.  To operate from a belief in a Good and All Powerful God this side of Heaven opens you up to disappointment in what He allows.  Sometimes the pain runs deep, sometimes it runs long.  And while agnosticism protects you from that pain, it does so at the expense of Your enduring hope and joy.  If there is no God, there is no disappointment in Him, but there can be no hope in Him either.

 

Jesus became flesh and blood to give us hope.  With Him we find it, without Him it cannot be found.  He may fail in providing according to our expectations, but He cannot fail to provide, that He did at the cross, finished, period.  

 

By His grace may my dear friend, and all of us, reach for the hand that will lift us back to Him when the pain runs too deep for too long, filling us continually with hope for the joy we find in Him which will forever more run deeper and longer.

 

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  For by it the people of old received their commendation."

 

"These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exile on the earth. "

 

"And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect."

   -Hebrews 11:1,13, 39-40 (ESV)