Stasi Eldredge's Blog

Life is so full. So fast. So demanding. Drive here. Pick up that. Make that appointment. Call that person. Call that person back. Try again. Plan the meals. Whoops, pick up something fast for dinner. Go to the grocery store again. Get the mail. Open the bills. Find space for your soul. Pause. Take a walk. Notice beauty. Feed the dogs, the cat, the fish, the plants. Go to work. Write the email. Navigate relationships. Pray. Pray. Pray some more. Dive into God. Get up earlier. Work out. Spend time in the Word. Volunteer at church. Scroll. Stop scrolling. Participate in your healing journey. Breathe deeply. If you are caring for someone? Double the list.

For thousands of years, the pace of life was 3 miles an hour; the pace of walking. Now it’s, what would you say? Goodness, a LOT faster.

But the soul hasn’t changed. The capacity of the soul hasn’t changed. The desires of God haven’t changed. The availability for transformation hasn’t gone away. It is, however, perhaps more challenging. At least it seems that way for me.

I needed to schedule a lunch appointment today that was mentioned weeks ago with a person I’m looking forward to being with but what rose in my heart wasn’t anticipation but irritation. Irritation at an already too full schedule.

Then came God. He didn’t come crashing in. No, I had to choose him. I sat down. I put down everything else, including my phone (the silent mode saves me). I turned on instrumental music. I shifted my gaze to fall upon Jesus and invited him into my irritation, my busy, my lack. I began to tell him how much I loved him. I loved him from the place of my irritation, my busy, my lack.

And he calmed my heart. He reminded me of his love. He came with his tender presence and his promise. I’m not on my own. I yielded my schedule to him and the pressure I was feeling of meeting demands began to dissipate. My priorities began to align. His sufficiency reset my panic and my pace. His peace began to saturate my soul as our union became the deepest reality of my heart. As Jesus invited me to breathe him in and to trust him, my heart rested in my God. I believed him and hope rose. I love him. He loves me.

Well, okay then.

Friends, remember, he loves you too.

I don’t know how you are today. Running or resting. Panicked or peaceful. But wherever you are, how ever you are, I invite you in this moment to pause. Turn your gaze to Jesus. Breathe him in. He is with you. He is for you. He’s not running at 100 miles per hour. He is walking alongside you, within you – moving at the pace of your breath, at the pace of your heartbeat, at the pace of your soul.

Jesus, I invite you to come into this moment. Invade my schedule, my emotions, my day. I need you. I choose right now to turn my gaze onto you. You are strong. You are good. You are more than enough to meet me and help me in what this day holds. I give myself once again to you and I pray to live in union with you – just as you desire. My soul rests in you. Speak to my heart. Is there anything you would like to say to me? To remind me of? Oh Jesus, I love you. I breathe you in and I listen.

I’m guessing that the biggest issue facing you right now is not what present to get someone for Christmas or how many different kinds of cookies to bake. There are larger forces at play in each of our lives.

From conversations I am having with friends and family detailing the sorrows in their lives, I know that each one of us or someone close to us is living in their own painful situation. We need more than a little Christmas, right this very minute.

We need Jesus. We hear the cry of the Psalmist, “Come let us worship and bow down – let us kneel before the Lord our God our maker, for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture.” The invitation is to come. Not to wait to come until it’s more convenient or feels more natural or is easier to do but to come now. Come in the midst of the heartache and the need.

Jesus says, “Come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest.” His invitation is to find rest in the midst of the busy, the full, the requirements, the demands, the depths, the sorrow, and the pace. We rest in his Presence. We rest when we behold him.

Sometimes it takes hardship to turn our gaze to our King, doesn’t it? Some of our most intimate times of encountering him are when we are on the floor sobbing out our desperate need. Sometimes, it is pain that is as CS Lewis says, God’s megaphone to the world. “Come to me”, he calls.

When my mom had only a few weeks left to live – she wrote that her unexpected diagnosis had been the most precious gift that God had ever given her. It had driven her to his feet and there she had found him to be more than enough, higher than her desires, and more compelling than life itself. Beauty. Hope. Triumph.

When my friend who many of you knew, Craig McConnell was in the hospital or at home battling leukemia, wracked with pain, he spent his time worshipping God and praying for others. I am one of the happy recipients of those life altering prayers. Prayers groaned out with purified holy longing. And that worship? Beauty. Hope. Triumph.

Oh to worship God in the midst of pain, sorrow, and heartache. How do we do that? Well, Jesus compels us. When push comes to shove, nothing else and no one else will do. But we have to look at him when we are not in crisis so that we know where to look when we are in order to find and know life.

School children practice fire drills and now – horribly – active shooter drills. You need the muscle memory. You practice martial arts with the hope to never have to use it in a real-life situation. You learn self-defense so that you are ready for what you pray will never come. You practice CPR. You teach your children to dial 911 in case of an emergency. You train.

We train our hearts as well. How? By turning our attention to Jesus. By fixing our gaze on our King. By looking into his beautiful face. By remembering who He is and by having him reveal more of who he truly is to us!  Because, who is he?

He is the one who saved us and is saving us. He is the one who has healed us and is healing us. He has come for us and he is coming still and he will never stop. He is the one who, moved by love, laid down his glory and in unmatched humility took on our humanity forever to live, to die, to rise again that we might be saved. He is the one who is faithful. He is the one who will never abandon us. He is the one who is working all things together for our good. He is the one who finishes the work that he has begun in us.

Song of Songs 5:16 says that “He is desirable in EVERY way.” Other versions translate the words to – “He is altogether desirable.” or “He is wholly lovely (desirable).” King James says, “he is all together lovely.”

Lovely means able to excite desire or love.

May this Christmas season be a time where we turn our gaze to Jesus that he might reveal more of who he truly is to each one of us, exciting our love and refueling our hope. May he capture our hearts, yet again.

I find it interesting to be in the last quarter of my life…at least if you divide a lifetime by 20 year increments. As I approach my 63rd birthday, I sometimes catch myself in my dreaming. I want to partner with God in so many ways bringing his beautiful Kingdom to hearts that don’t know him yet. I’d like to live in Ireland for at least three months – maybe years. Currently, I’d like to travel to about 15 other countries some of which to stay in for many months.

And…I want to be home and go to every single dance performance, soccer game, school show and whatever else my grandchildren are involved in. I want to have tea parties and pool days and play dates. I want to host worship gatherings in my home. I want my garden to finally flourish with constant care. I want to pour into the people God has placed in my life particularly my children and grandchildren but so many others too.

Well then, I can’t be traveling as much as I’d like. There are some experiences I want to have, places I want to go, people I’d like to meet in person that I simply won’t be able to. Choices need to be made. They always do.

In what I see as shrinking parameters around my life, around my time, I know a God for whom nothing is impossible and whose dreams for me extend way beyond my limited imagination. I can’t wait to see what he has in mind in this quarter!

I also know that this life – glorious and messy and breathtaking and holy and heartbreaking and honing – is not the end of the Story. Real life, true life, glorious LIFE will begin once I cross through the doorway that we all will one day walk through though we have no idea when. And then….the places I will go, the adventures I will have, the people I will share with and know in ways I only long for now, the God I will have intimate face to face communion with ALWAYS, well…let’s just say, it’s enough to make limitations on this life pale. And everything else that’s difficult in this life…pale.

It's coming. Oh the joys I will experience, the garden I will create, the experiences I will get to share, the depths to which I will know and be known without shame, the exquisite bliss that awaits of being in the Presence of our glorious King worshipping with all in unbridled, immeasurable, endless awe.

I can’t wait. But I will wait. And press in with every day I have left to draw closer to our God’s magnificent heart.

Yes, as I get older, there are increasing limits to my time and my capabilities, but friends, I will miss nothing.

I don’t know what you’d like to do. It might be to move without pain. It might be to hold the one who left too soon once again in your arms. It might be to have someone to hold at all. Maybe it’s to travel. Maybe it’s to not hurt so much, to struggle so much or to not be so lonely. Maybe it’s to share the Gospel with as many people as you possibly can. Perhaps it’s to experience God in ways you’ve only heard of.

Whatever it is, dear ones, it’s coming. In the end that really is not an end at all but a grand beginning, you will miss nothing.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."

Charles Dickens wrote "A Tale of Two Cities" nearly two hundred years ago.  His prescient voice makes me wonder, “Has it always been the best of times and the worst of times?” because it certainly feels true now.

Except for the best of times part.

Yes, we have unprecedented medical advancements; advancements that are available for you to benefit from if you live in certain parts of the world.

Yes, there are technological advancements so vast that they are mind boggling.  (I’m not sure if I should put those in the best category or the worst category.  I’ll give way that it belongs in both places for different reasons but the warning sign flashing on the soul to drop its siren songs of ease and false connection and run for the hills is very real.)

Yes, there is toilet paper, electricity and for most, running water from our faucets. There is same day delivery, one stop shopping from our living rooms, and drive throughs coming through in a nick of time. Yet the pace at which the world is running requires us to run to keep up and most of us are out of breath. Additionally, turning on the news or dropping onto social media can leave both your head and your heart spinning.

We live in a mad world.  It has always been so.  It is getting worse. 

And in this mad world, my soul is increasingly rebelling against the quick drive through attempts to soothe it that I toss its way.

The soul needs space.  It needs quiet.  It needs rest.  It needs room to slow down.  It needs rhythms of grace and it needs to be tended by practices that will nourish it.  It needs care.

You need care.

The soul has always needed care but never more so than when it finds itself navigating a time like the one we are living in.  To survive, we can grit our teeth and gut it out and make it through the end of the day.  To thrive, we have to stop gritting our teeth, gutting it out and instead open our hands and pay attention to our eternal selves - then we can make it through the decades not with a withered sense of self but with a robust one.

Our soul needs tending.  Our hearts are crying out.  “There has to be more!”

The Voice is real.  There is more.  There is a banqueting table prepared for us to feast at where our famished selves can be satisfied.  We are not meant to live from scraped crumbs to scraped crumbs but from deep abundance to deep abundance. Like the crowd in Mark 8, we too are to “eat and be satisfied.”  Taste and see that indeed the Lord is good.  Jesus says, “the one who feeds on Me will live because of Me.  This is the bread that came down from Heaven.” (John 6:58)

Life is what we are made for.  We will not find it apart from Life Himself.  He is holding out his hands to us even now to say, “Stop.  Be still for a while.  Listen to the cry of your heart.  Bring your cries to Me.”

“Jesus, Light of the world, as I look to you today in what feels like a world gone mad and choose to follow you, would you please illuminate my way.  Spirit of Truth, help me to navigate what this day holds.  Thank you that in it all and through it all, you hold me. Bread of Heaven, would you nourish me with your Presence.  As I quiet my soul in this very moment, breathing in your Presence, help me to fix the gaze of my heart on you and your all-encompassing love. In Jesus’ Name, I pray. Amen.”

I have mentioned before that I hate endings, partings, goodbyes; even “see you laters” can be fraught with emotion for me when I don’t have any idea when the “later” will be.

We have had horses for 17 years. They have been boarded at Wolf Ranch 3 minutes from our home. One of them was Kokolo, a gorgeous paint, Blaine’s horse.  But when Blaine got busy in high school and then moved away first to college then to grad school - well, he was John and my horse.  He was a noble horse. Regal as only a horse can be regal.  He was mighty yet gentle. Opinionated yet never once reared up in all his years.  When colic took his life oh so suddenly 3 years ago, the loss of him was heartbreaking to us all.  Heartbreaking.

Even if Kokolo hadn’t seen Blaine for 9 months, he would rejoice in recognition, whinnying in delight at their reunion.  In Kokolo’s heart, though I know he loved John and I, he remained Blaine’s horse.  Blaine was the only one who could leap onto Kokolo’s back with no saddle and together run in glory.  It was a sight to see.

But it was me who took care of Kokolo most of the time for many years.  It was me who gave him grain and groomed him.  It was me who took him out to the pasture and brought him back in; me who tended him when ill, me who waited while the vet did her thing, me who stood mostly patiently by holding him steady while the farrier cared for him.  It was me with all of them.  I admit that I am aware my memory plays tricks on me now enlarging my role.  It certainly wasn’t always me.  Not even close. But still.  I have my memories.  I have those years.

I didn’t grow up with horses.  I didn’t dream of them as a child or an adult.  My husband did all three.  In my forties, they were thrust upon me - though I was willing.  In those early years, my Father was teaching me a whole new terrain of my heart through them calling me to rise up and learn.  To not give in to fear at the horse’s power.  To become strong.  To grow. To love them.  To let them heal me in ways I didn’t know I needed.

And I did.  I studied.  I worked.  I grew.  I healed.  My heart changed - enlarging in places to the shape of a horse.

Kokolo’s long term companion is Whistle, a beautiful bay with two white socks on his rear legs.  He was a cutting horse in his youth - of fine pedigree and is stunning.  Horse people always ask about his line.  Whistle is gentle yet needs much assurance - coming close and nuzzling often.  Whistle is John’s horse.  A natural horseman, only he could give Whistle the assurance that he needed. Watching them together was a living symphony.  John - so at home on Whistle, Whistle exhibiting his glory stride by stride.

Whistle got injured 4 years ago.  He can no longer be ridden but his beauty is not diminished.  Still the loss of that glory stung.  The vet thought we should consider putting him down.  John said an unequivocal “No.” and nursed him slowly, day by day over many months back to the place where Whistle could walk again without a limp - and now - well, now Whistle can run.

When Kokolo died, the cries from Whistle lasted for two days - sounds no one at the stable had ever heard from a horse before.  Sounds that would break your heart.  Whistle grieved for months.  Perhaps he grieves still.  I know he remembers.  We sure do.

The stable provided new companionship for Whistle, so he wasn’t alone but none of these horses were Kokolo - the horse he had grazed with, run with and sometimes been run off by for 17 years.  It’s been hard.

Today, Whistle was trailered by John off the ranch Whistle has known for the better part of his life.  He is going to live on Blaine’s farm now.  He got into the trailer easily but became anxious once inside - whinnying for his old life.  We prayed.  I pray even now - peace to his heart.  Peace and ease to the transition.  He is moving an hour away. He will be cared for and loved well and soon meet a new companion horse.  I am so grateful that he is tucking in even more closely to our family.  I will still see him though not nearly as often.  No, not nearly as often.

I have been going to Wolf Ranch for the better part of 17 years.  Today was an ending.  A goodbye.  A passing with no “see you later” to the place.

I took pictures of Whistle’s stall, the stall that used to be Kokolo’s. The stall I have wept with Whistle in, told my secrets to, prayed over, and tended.  I paid attention to the fragrance, listened to the unique sound of my footsteps on the sandy gravel soaking it all in.  I stood and remembered the place of learning, the place of apprenticeship, the place of challenge and beauty and longing and Fathering and loss and love.

I wept.  My heart clenching in my chest.  My tears falling in longing to hold on to the goodness and my soul almost bursting with the hope of the End to endings that can’t come soon enough.

A couple of years ago, my husband was very sick for way too long.  He gets sick about once every 10 years – maybe.  The man is healthy.  He’s committed to caring for his health and don’t even ask me about all the vitamins he takes.  The smoothies he drinks?  Wow.  Taste is secondary to him.  If it’s good for him, he likes it.  He’s so in tune with his body that he can feel it respond to good things and yes, to bad.  Once I made pesto and it turned out that the walnuts, I had used were well past their expiration date. He took one bite, spit it out of his mouth and urgently told our sons, “Don’t eat it!  It’ll make you sick!”  It’s a family legend now and no, I couldn’t taste anything wrong with it.

I take vitamins too.  The ones he sets out for me every morning in a little ramekin.  I am spoiled.  I know.  But I still complain about taking them because, well, because I hate taking them.

Opposites attract.

I get sick about once a year.  Par for the course but when John was sick, it threw me.  It’s one thing to be ill yourself. It’s quite another when someone you love is suffering.  You know.  When he finally turned a corner, I thanked God yet felt suspicious about it and watched him like a hawk.  From a pleasant distance.

In my life I’ve watched friends walk alongside their beloveds through serious illnesses.  Some they didn’t recover from.  I’ve had friends walk through the unexpected death of their children.  I’ve walked alongside as friends grieve the pain their children are living in from the bad choices they have made and continue to make.  I’ve witnessed profound loss and suffering and some I have endured myself.

What I am struck by this morning is the faith that I have witnessed.  My dear girlfriend who sang a song of steadfast praise at her young son’s memorial service.  My other friend who called to tell me that his beloved had passed by saying, “She’s completely healed now.”  Another who with tears streaming down her face, thanked God for all the years she had enjoyed with her husband before he passed over.

And I am aware of my frailty.  I was thrown by my husband being temporarily ill and I am surrounded by kings and queens in the Kingdom whose steadfast faith has upheld them through unimaginable travail.  It has upheld you.  I don’t know your stories, but I know it has.

God is faithful.  That’s where I land today as I am once again encouraged by the Company of Saints.  God is true.  God is our Hope.  I am reminded that God is our anchor. He will uphold us through suffering of all kinds, all durations and all depths.  He will reveal himself to us in new ways in it and through it.  He is our Help, our Strong Tower.  He is always true, always worthy of praise.  He is Love and he is not going anywhere.  Look to him today my friends.  Entrust to him all that you care for and all that you are carrying.  His shoulders are broad, his character is strong, his heart is steadfast.

Steadfast indeed.

My son became a father six years ago.  The night that he and his wife, my beloved daughter in law, broke the news to us that they were expecting a child will go down in history as one of the most exquisite of my life.  The tsunami of grief that swept over them when they later lost their precious son by a mysterious miscarriage overwhelmed me as it rushed to shore.

I watched them walk in it and through it.  I witnessed them grieve from the very depths of their being - a primal grief, a connection to all of life and to all of death through all of time.  Step by painful step, the high water imperceptibly receded.  Slowly, I watched as they healed – as much as one can heal on this side; embracing the reality of their loss, allowing it to profoundly change them, weaving their son forever into the fabric of their shared story, the very fiber of their souls, loving him until that cherished moment when they will embrace for the first time and daring to choose life over and over and over and over again.

Then their little girl came along.  Wonder of wonders. She leaves me speechless - that light of glory. Then their first son on this side.  Joy beyond telling.  Fireworks in my heart.  And three weeks ago, born in my son’s childhood bedroom, came their next son.  I was there as an honored witness as that trailing flame of heaven made his entrance.

But for now, I want to try to answer the question my daughter asked me.  “What is it like seeing your son become a father?”  I should have an answer at the ready - my second son has two children as well – and a daughter in heaven too.  Oh, the exquisite joy of loving.  Oh, the immeasurable agony of loss.

But what is it like to see my children have children?  It is a difficult question to answer.  It is something out of time, out of language, out of the realm of a quick response.

It is a wonder.  It is holy.  It is how it is meant to be.  It is, strangely enough, not strange at all.  It is something out of earth and water, mud and fire, breath and time.  It combines the surety of the sunrise with the beauty of the sunset, the inevitability of mourning with the defiance of dancing.  It is the culmination of joy laced with eternity.  It is the exhale after a long-held breath.  It is the beauty of sunlight on water after a tempest.  It is the first warm air of a spring morning following a long winter.  It is the daring embodiment of hope.  It.  Is.  Glorious.

Yesterday was my son’s birthday.  In the midst of a messy, challenging, chaotic and beautiful day, he gave his four-year-old daughter a pedicure.  She asked him to take a picture of her lovely toes afterwards and send it to me.  He did a marvelous job.  He had first bathed her feet and then with brushstrokes of love, he spoke volumes to her little heart that she is a treasure beyond worth.  Worth time.  Worth effort.  Worth affection.  Worth seeing.  Worth attending.  Worth bowing down low to and washing her feet.  It reminds me of Someone else.

And in that precious and somewhat normal act is found all the wonder of the world.  To see my son love, unabashedly love, sacrificially love, love in a way that exceeds thought or the millisecond of choice, fills me with awe and worship.  My Faithful God has done this.  My Jesus bears love, and he bore it in me, and it is borne in my son and it bears life through his.  It is Tov.  It is Good.  It is a good that bears life unto life unto life. 

It is the glory of the King.  It is the wonder of world.

What is it like to see my children have children?  You have my answer.

Growing up is a process.  It doesn’t end when one’s childhood closes, those tender formative years.  I’m sixty-one years old as I write, and I continue to grow into a woman; the woman God meant when he meant me.

This morning I saw a cardinal.  Its bright ruby red form landed on a tree before me and I gasped aloud at its beauty.  I was instantly taken back to my childhood remembering a moment when I was standing by a window next to my mother as together we watched a cardinal land on a tree.  It was a white winter world, and the beauty of its deep hue was a stark and lovely contrast against the snow-covered landscape.

My memory engaged and lifted me back to other sweet moments of my childhood.  The blue and white winter jacket that I loved.  The fragrance of the Kansas air.  The rolling thunder of the wild and dark cloud filled sky.  The feel of the spring wind.  Walking to school up the broken cement sidewalk from my house to the top of the hill where my elementary school was.  Sequoia Elementary.  Tomahawk Road.  Tornado warnings. Those fabulous bright teal pants with the big bold yellow flowers.  The smell the autumn leaves released when I stomped through them.  The wonder I sometimes felt.  The loneliness I felt as well.

The tears came.  So did the thankfulness.  And so did the invitation of Jesus to welcome that young girl back into my heart.  I need her wonder.  I need her freedom.  I need her delight in the simple beauty of nature.  I need her to come home to my heart where Jesus dwells.

Other memories flooded my mind.  Sweet memories of my father.  Tender memories.

My father died when I was 23 years old from cancer.  Our relationship by then was loving, encouraging, healed from the anger of my younger years.  He blessed and accepted who I was; even my faith as I departed from the Catholic church that was so dear to him.

My father loved me.  In my later years, I had questioned that.  In my 30’s God invited me to take a closer look at my life as a child and a teenager.  As I said “yes”, he pulled back the curtain to reveal truths I had covered up.  Loneliness. Pain.  Uncertainty.  Fear.  Loss.  My parents were far from perfect and I needed to face that truth and the damage done to my soul.  I did. I became very angry.  And then, I forgave them.

In the years since, God has been revealing my story to me in various hues and colors, replacing the black and white naming  of “good” and “bad”.  With each passing year, I begin to see more clearly.  You see, love does cover a multitude of sins and the truth is, I was deeply loved.  I was deeply loved by hurting parents to the best of their capacity to love.  Was it enough?  Often, no.  Was it enough in the end?  Yes.

The lack, the pain, the sorrow drove me to dark places but ultimately, by the mercy of God, it drove me to Jesus.  And now, I am reclaiming the joys of my childhood as God reframes the story of my life to embrace the goodness while I grieve the losses.

Not everyone has a story like mine – mine that holds so much goodness in my childhood.  But I believe everyone has a story of God’s pursuit of their hearts and holds hidden treasure and beauty that he’d like to reveal.

I am growing older but I am also growing up – embracing all of me, even the young parts.  So yes, I am growing older, but I am growing younger too.

“I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her there.”  (Hosea 2:14)

God leads all his people into the desert at one time or another. Why? Is it to bring harm or to bring rich goodness? Cherished ones of the Father, we can trust Him. It is to bring goodness. Though it may take a while for us to see it.

Moses spent 40 years in the desert before God raised him up to lead Israel out of Egypt. As soon as God delivered Israel from bondage, He took them into the desert for another 40 before entering the Promised Land. David did a lot of desert time hiding out from Saul before God made him king. And the Spirit drove Jesus into the desert after His baptism for 40 days.

It wasn’t just men out there in the wasteland…

After Eve, the first woman mentioned by name in the Bible is Sarai, whose name means Princess, noblewoman. In modern Hebrew, it means woman minister. She too was a woman who lived in the desert, wandering for the better part of her life, never settling down or having a home. In fact, the only permanent address she owned was her burial place.

Sarah wandered the desert. Hannah wandered the barren terrain of her womb and her heart. Naomi lived in desolation and loss. Elizabeth was beyond hope, and Mary was to bear the hope of the nations in a life filled with the impossible that led her to spend many years in the desert.

And they all encountered the living God. The desert for them led to a place of great fruitfulness. Sarah had Isaac. Hannah had Samuel. Naomi had Obed through Ruth. Elizabeth had John. Mary had the Son of God—all in the midst of crying out for the promise of God’s coming. They had to wait long for it. And they were crafted and honed and shaped in the waiting.  But after a time—for some, a lifetime—they saw the completion of their desire to be fruitful. 

We sometimes feel that we are in the waiting room of our lives. Maybe you are there now. There are times when we do not see the promise of any kind of fruitfulness or goodness being fulfilled. Not yet. We are not married. We don’t have children. Our health isn’t what it was. We are lonely. The business failed. The partnership ended. Our future is uncertain. The life we had been dreaming of may have fallen down around our ears. The promises we believed were ours are becoming dim in our hearts.

Add COVID to the mix, and we must acknowledge that we’ve all been living in a waiting period of uncertainty with, very probably, some level of anxiety.

Now what? Now we are like Abraham and Sarah wandering in the desert. We are like Jacob wondering where his head will fall. We are the women and the men who preceded us in the Scriptures who sometimes got lost and to the end of themselves in the waiting period. We are joined with the great company of saints who have gone before us clinging to the God of Love while their eyes had yet to see His coming. We now are the ones who have not seen but still believe.

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who haven’t seen me, yet believe.”  (John 20:29)

We too are being honed and shaped. Chiseled and carved. We are being tested and tried and too often feel that we are found wanting.

And in all of it, we are clinging to God—calling out to Him in our dry places, from our places of lack where we thirst. Friends, even when we no longer have the strength to cling to God, HE IS CLINGING TO US.

Because God is faithful. He has not abandoned us. He promises that he never will. “I will never leave you or forsake you." (Hebrews 13:5) 

He is with us. He promises that he is always with us. “Behold I will be with you always until the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20)

He is moving. He promises that he is ALWAYS moving for our good. “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”  (Romans 8:28) The truth is, God uses desert experiences for our great good. We will encounter Him there. He will find us even if we feel at times, quite lost. We thirst. He promises to quench it—with His very Person, with Living Water. 

Because in all of it, ultimately, we are waiting for Jesus, the Son of God who came and is coming again. In this season of Advent, when we are waiting for so very much, let us turn our gaze and the longings of our heart to the one safe place for them to land. Our hope is in Christ. Our hope is in the faithfulness of His unchanging character. Our hope is in all the promises He has ever proclaimed that culminate in His victorious return. 

Faithful God, revive our hope as we wait. Reveal Your love to us more deeply particularly in our dry places. Even so, Lord Jesus, come.

I’ve come away for a respite.  Just a day.  Just a little distance.  I’m finding it hard to unplug. Had I stayed home, though, I would have found it near impossible.  There is the stack of bills that need tending.  There are the dirty clothes that need washing.  There’s the pile of them on the couch that need folding and putting away.  Do you see how much dust is on the table?  You haven’t returned that phone call yet.  Made that appointment.  Talked to that friend.  Called your mom.  She would love a call.  Yes. Good idea.  I wonder what the kids are up to today.  Boy, do the dogs need a walk.

And that’s just the beginning.  So, I’ve come away.  It gives me space for my mind to still and my soul to rise.  I know my soul longs to be heard yet honestly it is taking a while for it to show up; some time for me to hear it, to tune in.  In the waiting, I bless it.  It’s been a rough season for us all.  You don’t need the list.  I’m pretty sure that all our souls need a little tending, need to be saturated in mercy, saturated in the tender love of God.

So, I take a deep breath and look around me at the beauty that surrounds.  The wind is gently blowing the branches and the few leaves that stubbornly refuse to let go.  I feel the breeze as it caresses my face and imagine it is my Father gently surrounding me with His love, His assurance, His promise that all will be well; His promise that it already is.

I’ve stepped away in order to step into, to step up.  I’ve come away to shift my gaze from both the ordinary and complex demands of my life and onto the deepest, truest reality that God is.  The great I Am is welcoming and powerful and kind and stunningly beautiful and involved and moving and more loving and holy than my mind and heart can comprehend.  But I believe it.  I believe in His goodness.  I know He is here.  I know He cares for my life, for my soul and I know He cares for yours.

So, I sink in.  Today doesn’t have to be amazing.  He is amazing.  And I will rest in that.  Maybe tears will come.  Maybe.  But God has already come for me, for us all and my soul can nestle into that.