Day 3604 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

1 Kings 19:12 NIV

It’s one thing to be of a commonly hobbled faith which asks always for some kind of sign of the divine, while it’s quite another to stand in the midst of the evidence of such a fumbling faith’s feeble request.

But perhaps it’s the strangest scenario of all to have stumbled through the storms that we’d otherwise always only wish away only to find that God is waiting always behind every battle line we feel to be formed only against us within this life within this place in which it so often seems if life itself is perhaps a matter measured against our favor and favorite coming out in first place. Indeed, so many days find us asked again into the rain with a steady uncertainty as to why we need to weather the whether or not’s as never wanted but somehow always welcome.

And even in that we never seem to wonder as to why we welcome the whether and instead confuse the weather as if we’re unsure as to how God might display His mercy within what we feel only messy.

We do hate the weather, don’t we? I’m sitting in my normal perch in what’s still a tiny closet pecking away at this little laptop sat atop a shoebox in what is a suddenly quite frigid return of winter. Just outside the rain has begun to fall as the temperatures follow in step, leading in the bringing in of a winter storm blowing in. Snow and ice and sleet and bitter cold are supposed to shortly begin to blow in what is a world that I’m for this next little bit not a part of for these many moments.

It’s still there though. I hear the winds wrapping around whilst at times tapping keys along to the rhythm of the rain as it picks up the pace. I feel the cold closing in all around and the thick quiet of a clouded day that’s beginning to give way to an evening ever colder, darker, dimmer and supposedly more dangerous. For such is what storms are. Yes, be them these that bring the snow and ice or otherwise those which stir things up come springtime, it’s all the same, just a contention to the current to which we’re usually comforted.

And yet having been talking about the wars we face in life and too those we’re called perhaps to wage from within regardless of what’s going on around us, it seems to have invited this investigation as to the common consternation as considered within every chance of either precipitation or demand of participation. And in fact I dare say we even hate that latter matter more than the first. For while we don’t like rainy days or icy roads, we hate being asked to venture out into or rather unto the same.

No, instead we find every such challenge to our preference for such ideals as all our status quos to be matters that bring qualm as opposed to calm. And it’s this altogether violent kindness that we seem to still most days miss as we look for signs of the divine as if they’re all only always painted of clear skies and easy times. As if God is so boring or dull as to only imagine a path to perfection paved of only rainless days and sleep-filled night.

I for one can’t imagine that anymore, for I seem to have been found within a life in which the rain inside scarcely stops and nor do the nights prove endlessly resting either. No, rather it seems that it doesn’t much matter what the forecast says or even my eyes might see, the rain still pours within words flooding my mind asking me to think beyond the line of what I want to imagine coming, and even still coming more within the nights kept alive by neighbors who’re night owls and others who have some strange animal that races through their spaces as if running for its life upstairs.

And yet I’ve found in that noise the oddest of voice asking me to consider why it is that I feel myself so different than what is but an animalistic perspective set upon running for my life from what in life always feels some enemy out to get me.

“What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Why all the hiding whilst pretending to be hoping for what may have already been given just beyond the terror of what’s always only some selfish tragedy? For are not these both what all this life is? Just us hoping but too hiding? Us fighting to be finding what we want whilst fearing that either we won’t or will rather find something to want we don’t? Why are we so inclined to design this time as if it can unfold rather than unravel? Would that the unraveling prove more troubling than the other?

Is the unfolding of uncertainty truly better or safer than just unfurling it all at once?

Seems as if we so surmise. For again, most days find our eyes looking either contently upon the comforts we crave in life or rather in misery upon the far more common miseries we’d rather miss in what is this miniseries of mysteries as written for us to walk into following the faith that says there’s a reason for the season as opposed to our sight which only seeks the calendar ensuring that the season’s almost over.

Why do we so divide life into seasons? It was once a matter of harvests and thus sustenance and thus the substance of what was in many ways the giving of life, both that as measured in the time we would give to planting what would then give us life in return in the form of fruits and vegetables and other nourishment that afforded us the ability to continue forward. Now we just want to stay put whenever and wherever we stumble upon a seemingly safe shanty as assumed for its solace from the storms of life.

But what if we need them as much as those crops we don’t plant anymore needed them? Nothing grows without rain, and thus in many ways neither do we. I mean, plants need the water, and we need the plants for our nourishment. Even the animals need the same, both water and many of them are too nourished by plants. And so just as the deer pants and eats the plants that demand the rains pour, would not we be far more poor in both life and thus faith if not for the rain?

And sure, rain here is simply a figurative as the storms of life can often blow in without a cloud in the sky or any hint of precip to be found. Indeed, as I said above of my personal walk, it seems that most days the rain is pouring within only my head in what is a constant flood of fighting to figure out faith and find the way through all the ways and whys in which I struggle so often at that adventure. And yet I find that perhaps, having just written it, maybe that’s in fact the entirety of the point of everything.

It’s that it’s all meant to be an adventure, and yet, can we have any adventure without the dare to venture into where the adventure goes.

For it’s not found in caves like this one in which Elijah was hiding within this passage of Scripture. Life isn’t found in the fields filled with flowers and hours spent free to run about as if we’ve actually not a care in the world. It isn’t a matter measured in whether we’re where the weather is nice or how fast we can flee from where all it’s not. Faith, well, faith is in many ways quite the same as faith is life only magnified. And thus too, faith then isn’t found or fulfilled within the fears we feel or the failures they find for us.

No, rather it seems as if both life and faith are content to wait within the great outdoors of what seem the farthest outskirts of a path spent into the storms with a smile as opposed to a sneer. Yes, what if all of life and even more of faith are waiting always where we rarely find or feel any reason to go? What if they’re out in the cold of the snow? What if they pour alongside the raindrops which ruin our parades? Yes, what if life is supposed to be a parade of rain, of pain, of problem and downpour?

Might this be why we all so often feel so less than alive?

For we never seem all that inclined to see what might be just beyond the breaking, a little past the pain, waiting for us where these winds of war and want have finally stilled into a peace that we could have never known before this battle called life commenced in this place. No, instead we doubt such things could ever have such purpose. We deny that the storms are maybe needed to help wash away all we don’t need anymore. We fight this idea that says the flame is there for a reason that only our fear can’t agree to understand.

Indeed, what if all that blows across our horizons and thus unto our hopes is there blown so as to see what all of us might stand when life proves far from the safe haven we seek outside of Heaven?

I contend that this is quite why this life is in fact so often so filled with strife. It’s to remind us that in many ways we’ve asked for this! For no, turns out that we’ve not been all that careful as to our many requests. Because you see, we ask things from only our perspectives as purchased by the likes of pride and preference. And thus we never see the necessity of such things as the monstrosity that most days bring. No, we only see that we’d be better off without the assault.

But how do we know?

No, I think this is a matter meant for God alone to measure. For if it were as left up to us as we’d so clearly desire, life would have no fire, we’d feel thus no flame, know thus no pain, avoid any and all chance of rain and simply exist where the skies are plain and then life is too. But perhaps plain isn’t part of His plan. Perhaps missing the pain is also missing the point. For maybe the pain is the point. Hmm, seems the kind of odd idea that I can’t help but love anymore.

Indeed, what if the war is where we get to best watch God work? What if the hardships we face are the only things that bring the hope we never seem to find or feel elsewhere? What if pain proves His promise and provision in ways that peace never could? What if hurting or being hated helped us to feel closer to where we belong as they’re simply great reminders of where we don’t? What if misery is but a precursor to mercy? What if mercy would mean nothing if we weren’t so miserable as to believe in it?

Could we ever believe in such a hope as Heaven’s tranquility if not for a life lived in what’s so often tragedy rather than triumph?

Maybe that’s why some scream about how they feel so alive as they jump out of a perfectly good airplane and hurtle toward the ground at speeds that must all but scramble the insides as the eyes see things that most never will whilst here. And I’m not saying we should all book a skydiving trip for next weekend, I personally couldn’t be less interested in such thrill seeking. No, my thrills anymore are sought in wonder as I want to imagine the reasons why we endure the things He says we need to.

I want to understand what stands beyond where I am and why He knows what I don’t as to why it’s worth the walk through the war that is so often a wind in the face of everything I ever thought I always knew, blowing apart everything I could have so easily settled for keeping. Yes, I want to find and feel what He has in store that is worth so much more than everything I’ve wanted otherwise. For it must be amazing, this gift that keeps on asking.

For what could possibly be worth the wars we face, the struggles we find, the fears we feel, and this overall overwhelming loss of time as given us in what is a life that is so often everything but comfortable or easy or safe or even understandable?

What brings me the most hope of all anymore is knowing that I can’t know right now. And I know this because God’s not in the storms. He’s not defined by the earth quaking underneath our every step taken forward in only fear as found by everything that seems to make no sense along this ride. He isn’t contained inside the days of rain, the times of pain, the things that sting nor the worries that never seem to fade. Rather He is in the whisper which speaks softly just beyond the chaos of it all.

I want to hear that whisper which says what I don’t know. I want to feel the faith that finally tells me why I had to endure all I haven’t yet. I want to come crawling to the gates of Heaven, so utterly worn out and weary that I know my only hope of getting in is should He come out and lift me up and carry me the rest of the way. Because by then my strength won’t matter anymore anyway. My preferences will have all passed. My ideas will have all gone in up the smoke of a life by then all but behind.

But maybe with more ahead.

That’s what faith does. It looks beyond these normalized barricades of doubt and disbelief as designed beside every storm we don’t want to see and every struggle they always seem to bring and every battle that so easily begins but never seems to ever find an end. It promises that there is an end. To everything that we face and feel down here. Yes, it says that His path, though painful and precarious in places, it ends in a place where there is no more weeping or crying. No more pain or punishment. No further failings nor any more fears to be found.

No, all that’s found beyond all these storms and wars and worries still ahead is the gift of Christ, the One who died to show us that it’s not the pain that proves the point but rather where the pain points that proves the purpose.

I don’t want to miss that purpose anymore. Even if it’s always waiting beyond another war, another storm, another struggle, a little more strife, a far harder and much heavier life than the one I would pick if it were up to me. I’m thankful that it isn’t, for I know the hiding I’ve convinced myself into accepting. I know the mistakes I’m prone to making. I know the plans I’ve been painting and too just how perfect they always seem from my point of view.

But friends, my point of view, our point of view is one that sees reason in hating the rainy seasons. Our point of view still sees purpose within all that we seek to here purchase. Our point of view still recognizes questions that we feel inclined to ask before we’ll ever consider agreeing to undertake what seems so uncertain. Yes, we are still often a people that asks for a sign before we’ll believe in the divine.

And yet we’re also still a people who expect some big show as if our big God must do everything in such a way that leaves no room for doubt. There will always be that room though, that is so long as we allow it to be so. And I suppose that’s why God whispers. To remind us that He is with us in a way that brings always calm and peace and trust and hope, even in the midst of chaos and confusion.

He whispers. Stillness. Quietly. Calmly. Patiently. “Come, follow me.”

Here am I Lord, and too I trust that here isn’t where I’m meant to stay. So never mind the rain, bring on the pain, embrace the problem, welcome the persecution. For this life isn’t our vacation, it’s rather our vocation. Yes, this life is our office, our front line, our battlefield. This is our wartime. Peace comes later. Let us thus be careful so as to not live so fond of hiding that we miss it when He comes quietly just beyond the noise and confusion of a life lost somewhere between hope and hardship.

Simply because we still seem to assume the two are different.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold