Living in the Tension

I wrote this blog post a few weeks ago, knowing that whenever it was posted it would already be dated.  But at the same time, the faith and human experience within this post are not diminished by the passing of time.  I hope there is something in this post for you, even if it is as simple as a mirroring of your own feelings and struggles.  

When I wrote this, there were no riots a few miles from my house, but as this blog is being published, there is still a curfew in place here in Columbus because of them.  Coronavirus was the original impetus of my post, but it, just like riots or a tragic car accident or any other difficult time are just the flavor of the hour.  Some of the flavors seem bigger and nastier than others, but God promised life would be full of them and it really shouldn’t surprise us when they come.  

I want to be the person who is genuinely not surprised when hard times come because of my rock solid belief that I am genuinely safe in the arms of God at all times (Romans 8:38-39)... but I am not that person yet.  And that’s the theme of this dated blog post.  That God promised we would have many pressures bearing down on us, but that we would never walk through them alone or in vain. 

 * * *

I am writing this on a cold, overcast day during the time of the Coronavirus upheaval.  My five-year-old is in the other room playing with play dough, my husband is upstairs working remotely on two computer screens and my baby son is napping, blissfully unaware of what an illness or a virus even is.  It’s been almost 8 weeks since the schools have closed in Ohio and we have finally found some semblance of a rhythm to help us get through the day.  The very...long...day after day.

But my nerves are still raw from the worldwide response to the virus.  Just because we are able to get used to difficult situations doesn’t mean we dance around the house as if nothing has happened.  

“In the world you shall have tribulation,” Jesus says in John 16:33, “but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,” or “keep your chin up, everyone.  I’ve already won.”  

How do we live pulled taut between pain and joy, pressure and victory?  

I think the admonition in this passage will take me a lifetime of following God to get just right. But it’s important to know that God is very much aware of the tension He asks His followers to live in, whether their days bring worldwide diseases or wars or personal tragedies like cancer and death.  As we grow, and in the abundant grace showered all over us, we have the hope to not just survive this tension, but to transcend it (Isaiah 40:31, Phil. 4:7, Isaiah 26:3,4, 7, Hebrews 12:11-13).

There’s a passage in Ernest Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast that perfectly describes the middle ground I am in as I try to process this time in history:

“Now that the bad weather had come, we would leave Paris for a while for a place where this rain would be snow coming down through the pines and covering the roads and the high hillsides and at an altitude where we would hear it creak as we walked home at night… Maybe away from Paris I could write about Paris as in Paris I could write about Michigan.  I did not know it was too early for that because I did not know Paris well enough.” (p 18, 19)

It’s too early for some things to happen (like being able to write something encouraging for my church’s blog) because I do not know this time well enough. Maybe away from Coronavirus, I will be able to ascribe words to the amazing things God is doing as we wake up every morning in a world as upended as this one is right now.

The best I can do is offer a passage from the incredible George Mueller that I keep thinking about and being encouraged by:

“The strength of our faith is in direct proportion to our level of belief that God will do exactly what He has promised.  Faith has nothing to do with feelings, impressions, outward appearances, nor the probability or improbability of an event. If we try to couple these things with faith, we are no longer resting on the Word of God, because faith is not dependent on them.  Faith rests on the pure Word of God alone.  And when we take Him at His Word, our hearts are at peace… The closer we come to this point in our inner being, the more willing we are to leave ourselves in His hands and the more satisfied we are with all of His dealings with us.  Then when trials come, we will say, ‘I will patiently wait to see the good God will do in my life, with the calm assurance He will do it.’  In this way, we will bear a worthy testimony to the world and thereby strengthen the lives of others.”

If anything, I know that this time of global upheaval is strengthening my faith.  And if I know anything about my God, I know He is doing much more than that on a hundred or a thousand different levels all around the world that will one day converge as a raging, righteous, overflowing river of praise to His name.

In the meantime, I will wait.  

I will “be still and know” that He is God, à la Psalm 46:10.  

And I will keep reminding myself that no matter what battles we find ourselves in, Jesus has already won them.  

And I will let that be enough.