30 Seconds
Poetic that it is the last day of the year and I had one of those moments that only emphasizes what I have already written about below regarding perspective. You know those films where, at the end of the movie, the last 30 seconds, all the odds and ends come together to show you how much you were drawing the wrong conclusion? (i.e. “The Usual Suspects,” or “the Spanish Prisoner,” anything by Terry Gilliam)
Now imagine that you wake up one day after a month of wondering just what the hell has been going on…hell, because that is what it's felt like. And you find out that your suspicions of something bigger that you couldn't see were correct, even though at the time you felt like you must be losing your mind. And even so, it didn’t help that you were still in the thick of it and couldn’t see beyond the rain cloud that followed you like Charlie Brown’s.
Then someone sits you down and says, “Here is what was really going on.”
And your jaw drops.
You sit still in silence as tears of relief well up and flow.
God did that for me this morning. And is still unveiling it all. It’s not so much the events that were in play, it's how he validates what was going on inside…
What I really dig is that he did it by speaking the words I had felt the whole last week or so. The poetry of 77: Will the Lord walk off and leave us for good? Will he never smile again? Is his love worn threadbare? Has his salvation promise burned out? Has God forgotten his manners?” And after all this the poet's one stand: I am sickened by the thought that the Sovereign One might become inactive.” Or in my words, It kills me to think everything I have believed was in vain and God is none.
But that is what it felt like at times. What grabs me more is that it was God, today, who said, “take a look at these words written by another poet.” His way of saying, “You aren’t the only one who thinks I left you on your own.” It’s that he affirms what was stirring underneath, in my darkest thoughts that gets me. Because it shows that he is more intimate with me than I ever imagined…that I am known more than I know.
Now imagine that you wake up one day after a month of wondering just what the hell has been going on…hell, because that is what it's felt like. And you find out that your suspicions of something bigger that you couldn't see were correct, even though at the time you felt like you must be losing your mind. And even so, it didn’t help that you were still in the thick of it and couldn’t see beyond the rain cloud that followed you like Charlie Brown’s.
Then someone sits you down and says, “Here is what was really going on.”
And your jaw drops.
You sit still in silence as tears of relief well up and flow.
God did that for me this morning. And is still unveiling it all. It’s not so much the events that were in play, it's how he validates what was going on inside…
What I really dig is that he did it by speaking the words I had felt the whole last week or so. The poetry of 77: Will the Lord walk off and leave us for good? Will he never smile again? Is his love worn threadbare? Has his salvation promise burned out? Has God forgotten his manners?” And after all this the poet's one stand: I am sickened by the thought that the Sovereign One might become inactive.” Or in my words, It kills me to think everything I have believed was in vain and God is none.
But that is what it felt like at times. What grabs me more is that it was God, today, who said, “take a look at these words written by another poet.” His way of saying, “You aren’t the only one who thinks I left you on your own.” It’s that he affirms what was stirring underneath, in my darkest thoughts that gets me. Because it shows that he is more intimate with me than I ever imagined…that I am known more than I know.