What Your Facing Isn’t the End of the Story

She’s been telling me for weeks, about some little girl who is homeless. I didn’t listen. I was planning a wedding, single-handedly, caught up in my own send-off and all it means when you give a life away.

She was five after all.

And I just assumed someone at school was making this story up. Older kids on the playground, perhaps? Telling her tall-tails, trying to laugh at her response.

But then, this morning, I stopped. Her face was distraught…“Mommy, she sleeps in a truck.” Her words woke me up.

“A truck?” I responded, with grogging eyes after staying up all night, helping my older daughter with a project.

“Yes, mommy, a truck.”

I had seen her distress, felt her concern, witnessed her compassion prior when she had told me….but again, homeless children weren’t on my radar….A wedding was.

This week, I hear about heartbreak from another person who is like family. It’s the brightest light dimming, a child inside desperately beckoning for reconciliation.

I sit on the floor and weep. I cannot help her, reach her. She aches alone. I cry out to my Savior for her redemption.

A world spins with unknowns. Unanswered questions. Roads taken that I never thought we’d be stepping on.

All of the questions.

It feels like we are astraunats, floating in a gravity-less existence. The world blackens around. Only one small life-line of oxygen keeps us close and grounded.

Now, after the lights have been dimmed, the pages have stopped turning…My brain literally can’t handle one more heartache, one more story, one more word of the pure hurting…

I open to my Breath-of-Life. Suck in air from the life-line God gave us in black and white. 

“Awake, awake, put on strength.” (Isaiah 5:9) My soul gasps for air. “The ransomed of the Lord shall be returned, and come to Zion with singing.” (Is. 5:11)

I doubt the words with my mind, but KNOW they are true in my spirit.

Strength…how to put on strength, when you feel like you are naked? How to awaken when it feels like God has been sleeping, forgotten, denied or forsaken?

My mind tries to unravel these words…force them from the truth in my soul to the questions of my mind…

I use them as footing…but the aching is real. The heartbreak, maybe even necesssary….

Grief holds no hand politely, but instead brutally forces itself unwillingly on those most unsuspecting…

“I, even I, am He who comforts you…” (Is. 5:12) I feel Him in the room.

“Who are you that you should be afraid.” Ancient words seem to be talking.

I start sensing His presence, remembering His goodness, holding to the faded thoughts of times of past faithfulness.

Like whisks of a faded summer breeze….I sense Him pursuing…

“I am the Lord your God who divides the sea whose waves roared…The Lord of Hosts is His name.”

His arms are reaching as I keep reading through Isaiah. Could it be, He hasn’t left us, hasn’t left me. He isn’t a God who forsakes us?

And then, He grasps my mind, my heart, my entire being, with words friends had told me, a promise God gripped me with long ago…

“I have covered you with the shadow of MY hand.” (Is. 5:16) He holds me. “You are my people.” My understanding returns like a fresh stream in weary and dried land.

I think of the little girl our five-year-old told me about today. I saw her on the bus this morning. She refused to look at me.

Long straight hair covering her eyes. A black hoodie, perched around her neck. And an old, dirty blanket, tucked to her side….

He has not forgotten. I whisper to myself.

Then, I read on…

“Awake, awake! Stand up!” The weary legs of my heart rise to take their place. The parched land within my soul grabs tight His promises.

And then, it all comes together. The aching, the pain, the heartbreak, the loneliness…it climax’ like an orchestra of truth playing their final song….

“The Lord….pleaads the cause of His people.” (Is. 5:22) He is there. He is watching. He is advocating. He has not forsaken.

(Isaiah 52)

“Awake, awake! Put on strength…put on your beautiful garments…shake yourself from the dust, arise!”

Dirty rags of lies have gone. The beauty of His magnificence fills me. I awaken. I am clothes in HIS righteousness.

The world does have hope, His name is Jehovah. He is the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

I keep seeing Him…

“Loose yourself from the bonds of your neck.” (Is. 52:2) I see in my minds eye an elephant. His shackles are looses, yet his chains remain…

But there is strength…strength to step away from all the has bound him, all that once threatened his life and safety.

Oh, we are overcomers. Overcomes by faith. It is not hopeless, we are not helpless. Christ came, died, to make a way for us the most desperate.

His blood does take away the chains that once inhibited us. We have been loosed, now it is our call, our purpose, to come and fearlessly declare it.

Not by works, so that any man can boast. Not by labor or striving, or our own efforts. “You shall be redeemed without money”, Isaiah 52:3 tells me.

And oh the freedom of a debt another paid for our ransom. The love in a friend who sacrifices all so that we could be debt-free, and step boldly out from what once kept us…

Then, in our freedom, I hear His mandates….

“My people shall know MY name.” “I am He who speaks.” “Bring good news.” “Proclaim peace.” “Bring glad tidings of GOOD things.” “Proclaim salvation.” “Your God reigns.” “Watchman, lift up your voices.” “Sing together.” (Isaiah 52:6-8)

“The Lord brings back Zion.”  The girl on the bus. The one collapse without purpose. The children lost. The stories untold. The broken seeking something….

All of it…He will redeem it.

And I don’t know your story at this moment. The seeming silence of God or the areas of your life you have been waiting for His redemption….

But His promises are true. I hold to them this morning. He is a God that hasn’t left us. In fact, He went to the cross, paid for and ransomed us….

He is coming for every lost soul.

He is riding that white horse and will pick up every piece, ammend every message, finish every story with His truth….

He knows those deep places of your heart…the ones unfulfilled. The questions, the doubts, the promises He keeps whispering….

Hold on. Arise. Gather strength. This is not the end.

“He has redeemed.” (Is. 52:9) “All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of the Lord.”

Redeemed – (ga’ al) Strong’s #1350 – To ransom, repurchase, set free, avenge or repay. Ga’al is to buy something back that has been lost through helplessness, poverty, or violence. 

Psalms 72:14 states, “He will redeem the life of the needy from oppression and violence.” 

God has pledged to redeem the whole creation. (Rom. 8:20-23)

Hold on friends…Today is not the end. He will redeem every broken story. We see in part, but there is a picture He sees fully….

with faith, together, let’s “awake”, “stand” and “sing”. He is God alone. And He does redeem.