Every Day with Jesus: Faith for the JourneySýnishorn

Dependence

‘Rise during the night and cry out. Pour out your hearts like water to the Lord. Lift up your hands to him in prayer pleading for your children, for in every street they are faint with hunger.’ Lamentations 2:19 

In our congregational worship we lift up our hands, palms open, as we recite the Lord’s prayer. It’s a sign of our utter dependence on God. A symbol of surrendered lives in service of the Lord. However, such surrender is costly. I never thought of myself as a proud or stubborn person; I guess each of us thinks the best of ourselves. However, I struggled, and still do, with yielding the shape and direction of my life into God’s safekeeping. I’m never sure just how safe I am when I don’t have the casting vote over my destiny. At root it’s an issue of trust. 

Successful at school and university, I had very little experience of ‘failing’ in my youth. So, when I met an obstacle I couldn’t move, my first wife’s unanticipated neurological disease, I struggled. The struggle was with my own capacity to handle the situation, as well as with the nature and character of God. How was this the action of a loving God? Had I been deceived or deceived myself? 

When facing what lies beyond reason, logic fails us. We are cast adrift upon a sea of personal agony. Acute pain drives out any desire for faith in an unseen God, one who appears unable to grant our desires or ease our pain. 

My attempts at prayer were hijacked by my own anger and confusion. I needed others to pray alongside me. I had to pause and wait within my apparent abandonment for a moment of connection with God that I had no confidence would ever come. 

As we observe Covid-19’s impact and ongoing influence upon our lives, it’s challenging to retain our confidence in God. Just as medics are forced to address an unknown virus, so we must commit our lives in an unknown season into God’s safekeeping and struggle to keep faith as we navigate uncertain waters. 

Something to Consider: Where and what are the life pinch points affecting your confidence in God? 

A Prayer to make: ‘Lord, help me to keep faith even as I lose sight of you and confidence in you’.