The clock on my laptop says exactly 3:45 a.m. My body aches as I put my two-year-old back in her bed. It’s been a long three days of flu in our house. The call to parenting lately includes wiping noses, holding and consoling children, being a source of strength, all the while knowing you too might catch this dreaded “bug”.
And while the economy in the U.S. is thriving, house prices, especially here in the Seattle area, rising, downtown is almost unrecognizable, tents and human fecus, garbage and the city I love overtaken by homelessness and opiod addiction.
My daughter texts me at 3:00 a.m. telling me of a drop box she just passes in Europe. (A drop box is a box where women can anonymously leave their infants without detection, societal persecution or government interference)
We both greive for those brave and hurting mamas and pray for families for each and every infant.
My husand and I heard the howling all last week. Coyotes prancing around our property, seeking the chickens we’ve raised from small chicks.
Coyotes, bolder than I have ever seen them. During the day, prowling. We’d open the door, shout and try to scare them, yet one particular just stood there, staring at us earily tauntingly us with his glaring eyes and rigid stance.
We’ve been keeping the children close to home lately because every good and caring parents wants first and formost wants safety and protection for her children.
Yet, I imagine our friends in Chi*a. Masks, house arrest, reports of the government silencing people, demanding, even threatening jail, if they leave their homes in certain Provinces.
I see swarms of locus’ taking over Africa, fires in Australia, pain in people’s faces as they fail to look me in the eye, lifting faces from their cell phones.
Has the world been taken over by preditors, preditors that don’t just slink around in the dark, but stand bold, in the daylight, unafraid of their opposition?
And where are the Christians, shining bright in the gravest darkness?
I have heard of some believers walking the streets of Wuhan, risking the flu and their very lives to preach the gospel. Others who are safe, shrink at hard things, hide and mute themselves when skies blacken and the darkness of winter begs for the breaking of Spring.
I lean over my bed, pick up my phone, and amid pounding head, exhausted body, I read the words, “Consider it nothing but joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you fall into various trials.” (James 1:2)
Another translations say,
“Count it ALL JOY!”
Caring for sick babies, broken wells, standing against lurking preditors? ALL of it…JOY?
I remember a season when I had weak faith. It was then I preached only health and my own version of a sterile Jesus, to all who might listen.
Oh how haughty and arrogant, shallow and inauthentic my words were.
I crawled up in some version of a clean, almost plastic Jesus. The one I thought I needed to represent in hopes He might cover the ugly parts of me and consequently hide my sin and shame.
What I found, over time and through pain, was that Jesus wasn’t just some stone-like shrine, some 
clean, religious man who set himselves apart from real pain…
Jesus stepped into the mess, He took on the weight of our sin and pain. He chose death, so that you and I might live.
He gave up heaven for thirty-three years, to live in a broken existence, so that you and I might not just be better, cleaner or shinier but so that we might die to self and resurrect, like He did.
When our sin is willingly crucified, new power and life can resurrect in us.
And sometimes that “death” to self, comes at the cost of losing addictions, cutting strongholds, doing hard things.
Loved lived out like obedience is the greatest force of all mankind.
The pain in our lives was never meant to destroy us, but mold and refine us into a better understanding of Jesus, and a new, purer, holier you and me.
So, when hardships come, when the nights bleed on and on and you give up your life for the sake of something better, living is more than wading painstakingly through muddied waters….
Living a life willing to be crucified allows us to rise and stand, face the morning with grace, hope and JOY, knowing, “the testing of your faith [through experience] produces endurance [leading to spiritual maturity, and inner peace]”. (James 1:3)
I never liked the duality of inner pain and some plastic Jesus. I needed and still need a Jesus who comes close in the hard, walks with us, near, when the road feels long, the darkness taunts, and the night surrounds, threatening to swallow us.
I adore a Savior who gets low to meet us in the valley of the shadow of death. It is there, His rod and His staff, they comfort us.
Still waters and a Good Shepherd seeks to find us in the place of our deepest pain.
I don’t know about you, but I want the kind of faith that…
- Kept Paul and Silas singing in the jail cell
- Made Daniel face the lion in the lion’s den, willingly and bravely.
- Gave Queen Esther the confidence amid a multitude praying and fasting with her, to risk her life and approach the King declaring victory for her people.
We were never meant to live amidst death and poverty, homelessness and sickness, where ravenous beasts wait outside our door to take down the weak and innocent.
We were made to stand and have victory, rejoicing in our trails because they strengthen our spiritual muscles, making us realize God is everything He says He is; strong, omnipresent, powerful and just…even when it doesn’t always look or feel like it.
James 1:4 tells us, “Let endurance have its perfect result and do a thorough work, so that you may be perfect and completely developed [in your faith], lacking in nothing.”
I want to lack nothing, don’t you? In the trials, through the loss, in the pain, amidst grief and questions…I want to rise and know my faith is stronger than anything this temporal life has to offer.
Life is only just a vapor.
Joy isn’t a natural response. It’s a choice we have to make to proclaim God is bigger than any and every circumstance.
He is all powerful and He can be trusted.
So, I wake this day, saying my JOY is full, my day is new, my HOPE is in the promise that Jesus sits on the throne….
And if He can conquer death for all time, be in a tomb, yet rise to new life for me and you…We can know and be sure, and have faith…
There is nothing, no NOTHING our God cannot do!
