Friday, November 15, 2013

Dearest God,

The way to hope is faith!  When a sense of hopelessness rears its ugly head, everything looks despairing.  In our minds we believe nothing will change.  Faith is quickly tossed out because we thoughtlessly think there are no options.  We discard you because we believe you do not want to change our situation or you are not interested in us or you do not have the power to transform.  We give every ounce of our being to feelings of hopelessness, dread, loss, sorrow, and anger and we are miserable.

Perhaps our problem is we define faith in terms of what we get or fail to receive.  We blame you for our miserable state.  We believe in a "too small" god like the plastic figures we win at the county fair that break all too quickly.  We miss the "more" faith is.

I have to confess there are some situations in my own life where I give up and give in to such faulty thinking. I presume my miserable condition will stay with me forever.  I assume the future will look black and bleak. How faithless, how inaccurate, how wrong, and how foolish!

Recently, I engaged in a conversation that left me absolutely nowhere.  No, that's not accurate; I went round and round and round and round again.  There didn't seem to be any stopping off place for a reassessment and reconsideration.  I lost hope.  But later in a conversation with you, you invited me off to the side where I could listen instead of speak.  You showed me plenty of places where I could pull off, pause, think, reevaluate, and renew myself.  Hours later the situation did change. There was understanding and a desire to talk something through.  There was learning and a commitment to shift and alter the route we had been traveling. I realized faith had woven itself into our attitudes and behaviors and the change that was wrought came when we leaned to you for understanding.

God of grace and power,
thank you
for insights
that lead us
out of hopelessness
into hope,
from despair
to faith,
and from darkness
to the light.
Thank you,
Great Teacher,
for lessons
to be learned.

Love, Andrea