a lot of things

A lot of things are going on. i've just returned from a wonderfully frustrating weekend with the Middle High kids from the church. It really was a great weekend of relationship building and sowing seeds, but it served as yet another reminder that laboring is hard hard work. It feels fruitless to a point, but as my dear brother reminded me today,

"the Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance."
(2 Peter 3.9)

There was a verse that i heard last week and was enthralled, so i looked it up in Philippians. Reading on, i discovered it was buried in rich context only a few chapters from where the sessions of the MH retreat where based. It's another reminder of who's really in charge around here:

so then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
(Philippians 2.12-13)

it is for this reason that i

"count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom i have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that i may gain Christ"
(Philippians 3.8)

Because of hope deferred it's been a frustrating day, in my writings this weekend i discovered that

'i cannot cry.
i have no anger to release into violence.
my frustration is great but i will not pound walls.
my world is too close to turn it all off
and there is no darkness or peace.
are you enough Christ? will you really really someday satisfy?
will this ever get easier?
are you really better?'

These are questions my MH girls have not even tasted an answer to, and don't even know that they are asking. but they are deep in the hearts of all humankind, of this i am convinced.

i felt God calling for me to pick up His words and experience peace, but i was scared of what i thought He would lead me to. i begged Him for words to sustain and not crush me. He gently led me back to Lamentations, one of the first sections of the bible that ever captured my heart:

My soul has been rejected from peace;
i have fogotten happiness.
so i say, "my strength has perished,
and so has my hope from the Lord."
Remember my affliction and my wandering,
the wormwood and bitterness.
Surely my soul remembers
and is bowed down within me.
This i recall to mind,
therefore i have hope.
The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed
never cease,
for His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
"The Lord is my portion," says my soul,
"Therefore i have hope in Him."
The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
to the person who seeks Him.
(Lamentations 3.20-25)

And so i am led to trust again that God's nearness to me is my only good, and to ask Him just how GOOD He really is, and what that means for my life. Life is a wild ride, and my head is spinning tonight with happenings and meanderings and callings. God still has not answered some of my questions, but maybe it's that He's answering with a 'not now' and not necessarily a 'forever' or a 'never'.

live from my heart, it's monday night.