Okay, sometimes you just have to wonder... Its been one year, four months and twenty three days since the beginning of what seemed certainly to be an end. That is 510 days of gut wrenching, mind wracking, revolving movie playing over and over again kind of days. Not the kind of days when you wake up and say, "Hey, isn't this wonderful...what shall I think about today" kind of days, but the kind of days where you are already awake thinking about what you've already been awake thinking about for the last, er....509 days. And into this arena, just as I might have been getting used to the idea of how things are is how things are going to stay, God up and sends a glimmer of hope that THIS may not be the future after all. In fact, perhaps He even waits until I formally note to the other party that this is how it is and that is that, (which I pretty much did in a note thanking that party) and then He begins to open up a future that was, well pretty much impossible on human terms.
Let me put into a word picture, drawing upon a Biblical event; the fall of Jericho. Pretend with me for a moment that God had NOT (even though we all know He Did) told Joshua about how long they were to keep up the circuitous route around Jericho. Somewhere along the line they might have begun to think that the walls of Jericho were just part of the scenery and not an obstacle soon to be removed. Faith was evident in that they still had to walk, whether is was 7 days or 510 days, but the perspective tends to change with the added time. You know God can, but you begin to doubt He will and then slowly get used to the idea that this is how it will be. Of course in the said example, it only took 7 days to see the fulfillment of a plan already laid out with a final goal in site. In the 510 day example of my own, there is no such stated final goal visible as the situation deals with humans and human relations in a world where the track record of the same is not so good. In fact, we are told to love, pray for, bless and not curse, etc but never told that this will always produce a good result other than developing the character in us that Christ desires to see.
It has been a total of 398 days since the real separation began, although the days between the commencing of the 510 and the 398 were not really congenial days, in retrospect. For that matter nothing is guaranteed in this current sliver of hope visible, but what is visible is the vision that God can and MAY CHOOSE to do something grand! My heart is ready for that. I've tried and tried, to get "used to the view" of how it is and accept that it will remain the same or worse for the future in terms of relationship with these ones, but never with success. I've gone back and forth and forth and back trying to play out a reasonable scenario that restores and repairs the damages done, without success. I've tried ignoring, discarding, avoiding and for whatever reason, God just keeps putting them back in view and in my mind. We've considered really abrupt changes to life and radical changes in our work to remove us from their view....hasn't worked either. So however God chooses, whether opening this sliver of hope into fullness or closing it completely, the moment has served a purpose. I am reminded of the Words of God Himself in Isaiah 55:6-11:
Seek the Lord while He may be found,
Call upon Him while He is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way,
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
Let him return to the Lord,
And He will have mercy on him;
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon.
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
“For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven,
And do not return there,
But water the earth,
And make it bring forth and bud,
That it may give seed to the sower
And bread to the eater,
So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
And the Words He spoke to Samuel in 1 Samuel 16:7:
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
So, God having the seen the hearts of the matter can make something beautiful out of something very, very broken. This I affirm and believe...the problem that I often have, as a human, is that what I see and what I try to get used to in the view of life, is often the very thing that God is trying to bring down. The walls I see are perhaps not walls, but opportunities. That is up to HIM!!
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