hopeless?

I walked out of the house yesterday and noticed that some flowers from annual bulbs were making their way through the ground. On a cold, dreary morning with flurries in the forecast, these flowers wriggled their way out of the cold, hard dirt just because. They ought to know, even before they pop out of the bulb, that it is nearly hopeless for them to push themselves through frozen and cold dirt, against gravity to go upwards.

It’s funny how the Holy Spirit can send like twenty sentences simultaneously, making me sit in the car and just ponder. That’s what happened this morning when I saw those stubborn leaves peeking out of the dirty dirt! As we enter the third week of social distancing and I have more time to remember and consider this season and the recent past.

2019 was a year of reflect on new words for me…words like lament, grief, and hesed.  Just as the hard “settled” in to stay, my husband took it upon himself to plant some annual bulbs all around the front of the house. I forgot about them, and they had been sitting in the house for weeks ready to plant. So last spring, I was surprised and delighted to see them pop up. Their emergence brought a feeling of hopefulness that lament would not always be so close.

The Lord was beginning to teach me what joy looked like against a backdrop of sorrow. Like small blips on the radar, the Holy Spirit slowly repeated two words most of the year: joy and hope. Joy and hope. Joy and hope. 

At times, it was so annoying. Hope and joy. But at that time both words were blurry and hard to bring into focus. Like staring at one of those geometric pictures that is supposed to look like something . . .

I wrote last winter about how God’s faithfulness, His hesed, could and should change the way that I live. Circumstances could be seen through the grid of His faithfulness. Broken relationships and sin around me could be seen through this grid. The good, the bad, the hard, the painful, and the ugly, all seen through the grid of God’s faithful love running towards me.

That’s been my year. God ran towards me as a faithful father, sending my brothers and sisters to run towards me and teaching me through even small moments that He wastes nothing. And those have been valuable lessons as I sit typing at home, or visit with friends virtually instead of in person. He doesn’t want to waste this time either in my life.

Every circumstance, every relationship, everytime I choose to love or not love . . . He wants to redeem them all and use them to mold me into His character.

I’ve also watched several close friends also walk in a season of deep questions and pain. Somehow it’s easier to see God at work in and through them and their circumstances. But He has used all of it, like a series of visual aids, to bring the hope and joy into focus.

When I saw the flowers popping up this morning, I remembered last spring. And I remembered God’s promise to be faithful to me. I couldn’t help but smile, as I can see so clearly now how the sorrow was necessary to bring the joy into focus. He did not change my circumstances. He did not remove the pain or sorrow. 

He has been faithful in the past, and will be faithful also in this season.

I learned that hope and joy originate with Him; He authored them. And He is what anchors them. That’s how He can grow joy in the midst of deep sadness. And He can develop hope in the midst of a despairing situation. 

Because the hope and the joy were always about Him all along. 

I also wrote last winter that I’ve always been a person of great optimism, the glass being ⅞ full. And that’s not true anymore. I’ve fundamentally changed. This morning I was reflecting on the glass being mostly half full :)

But, I’ve also been changed in the kind of joy and hope that I am looking for and towards. I’ve learned that the deeper the pruning, the better quality of fruit that develops. He is after the best fruit in this season of my life. (My boss often reminds me that I’m in the third quarter of life, being fifty-four, and I should not settle or be content with mediocre fruit).

Perhaps my short words here strike a chord with you. Your Father is loving you and running after you, no matter how the circumstances around you look. He wants to bring hope and joy into focus as you turn your gaze towards Him. I’d love to pray for you.

You can email me with the link at the bottom of this blog; please write and share how I can be praying.