I just told my friend Rob that if a certain situation in my life didn't work out how I wanted then I was going to renounce God, because I couldn't deal anymore. Every once in awhile I like to say really childish things like this. While perhaps moderately entertaining for the person at the other end of the conversation, it's really troubling to know that I haven't really given up my flair for the dramatic since I was two and flinging myself on escalators at the mall as people stepped over me when I didn't get my way. Things change, and yet they stay remarkably the same.
But then I logged onto my neighbor Scott's Tumblr which I love following because he has such a delightful perspective on life and always has an interesting find--and he's the pinnacle of all that is Seattle, so I feel very connected to the Pacific Northwest. I found this gem:
After I read it I got my composure about myself. I imagine I'm in a Saturday sort of place right now. That waiting place, where all you can have is hope. I hate this place almost as much as I hate BJ's (evil twin of Costco). But how do we learn to find beauty in waiting and disappointment? I don't have the answer to that question yet. I suppose this is really what Easter is all about anyways--hoping in what we cannot see, which brings me to one of my favorite verses:
"For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is not seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?" Romans 8:24
Good question, Paul. If we can see it, feel it, touch it, know what's coming, then why do we need God at all? And while I would greatly enjoy it if God would decide to write what it is that is going to become of my life, preferably through the use of neon signs or perhaps a nice musical number, this is not how God operates (though THINK of the possibilities if that were the case!) nor requires faith or hope. So for now, I will have to keep hoping in the things unseen, because that is ultimately what faith is...(although I daresay that a bottle of wine might make the medicine go down a little easier...? Hrm...)
“Waiting is our destiny. As creatures who cannot by themselves bring about what they hope for, we wait in the darkness for a flame we cannot light. We wait in fear for a happy ending that we cannot write. We wait for a ‘not yet’ that feels like a ‘not ever.’”
--Louis Smedes
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