My blog has been quiet lately, contrary to my plan. Life always does what it does, and some phases last longer than we ever dreamed they would. The holiday season gave us time with family down that Alabama dirt road, and then an ice storm landed us longer than planned with Arkansas family around the fire. My four boys roared in cousin-laughter, sat in the laps of grandparents, and walked quiet ridges watching for squirrels, learning to listen in the silence of the woods.
I, too, have felt so secret, hearing Spirit speak, the conversation growing longer, waking to the voice in my heart still drawing me in. It’s a funny thing, too, all the joy that’s happening in the quiet.
If you were to peer into my life, you’d see the actual facts. They would list out like a monologue from Debbie Downer. My youngest child struggles to keep from infection, and he struggles to grow. We can’t explain it, and it weighs on my every thought, and add to that how my boys actually just watched our dearly loved dog be crushed in our driveway; Grandma just called to tell me goodbye as she thought she was passing from incredible pain; my closest aunt this week slept for a while and then woke in the arms of her maker.
Somehow in my processing after the shootings in Connecticut, I snapped awake and said “of course.” This is all of course, how things get much, much worse before they get better. I keep thinking about pain and what a flash in the pan it has to be compared to glory. It’s either that, or God isn’t real.
Struggling through I read Ephesians 1. Paul wrote to the church in such a corrupt time. The church had a tendency to act sick, misplace hope, how it still does now, and so he prayed for them, that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened, that they would know the hope to which they had been called. He reminded them of the true kingdom, the glorious inheritance and the authority, power, and dominion of Christ.
That’s it right there! It’s hard here, but our calling is to hope in this broken place, and hope calls pain temporary. Hope peels back the veil and enlightens our eyes. Suddenly I see the broken, see things as temptation to lose all hope and to sink low in the darkness, and I see Hope as the greatest element of faith.
Now isn’t Faith the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen?
If we believe, the world can crumble and our very eyes witness destruction, but there behind the scenes, hope acts like a pin in my bones. I feel it now, as I long to be in the arms of my aunt again, I am infused with the knowledge of glory. It feels like the greatest of miracles.
Do you know your calling? Do you know the hope to which you’ve been called?
post by Amber C Haines
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