More about hope...

What do we place our hope in? Do we place our hope in God? If we don’t, what do we place our hope in? Even if we say we have no hope in anything, that isn’t really true. I can say, “I see no hope,” but I still keep on living day to day, meeting my obligations… I must be placing some sort of hope in something… mustn’t I? Whether it is financial security, pleasure, self-fulfillment, schemes of my own, relationships, or even my independence and grit to just keep on going…

The book I am reading right now “The Upside of Down,” says that healing beings with a choice to place our hope in Him. But is also says that our hope is threatened sometimes by the haunting sense that He is the One to blame for all our troubles. Since He is a God who is all-powerful and sovereignly aware of every moment and movement on this planet, could not He have prevented what happened and granted us an exemption from trauma, as He seems to have done for others? Is He to blame? Could a loving God who says He is concerned for us ever have a reason to let us experience such trauma? Until we understand His place in our problem, hoping in Him will be a tough assignment. (pg. 25)

The questions above that Stowell wrote about, are exactly some of the questions I have had rolling about in my mind for months now. I don’t know if I can come up with the answers now or ever. I suppose some things are never going to be answered. One of the things I have come across in my counseling and working through things is the realization that He is always with us. I can’t escape His presence. Though I haven’t walked through therapy with all the traumas yet, the ones that I have, I have gotten the distinct sense that God has been there, even in/through the trauma, whether I was a Christian at the time or not.

Sometimes that is a comfort, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes it still makes me wonder why He was there, standing by my side, yet didn’t stop whatever it was that was happening, especially when I was younger, and couldn’t do anything about it… couldn’t do anything different by my choices… when I was powerless.

Maybe someday I will get an answer to why. Why didn’t He intervene? Why didn’t He spare me? Why did He allow me to suffer? Then again, maybe I won’t ever know the answers. Am I willing to live with that? Are you? Can I walk on in faith that even in the pain He loves me? Even in the pain He is there? Even in the pain, that He doesn’t stop, He will still work in my life? Can you? It takes FAITH to believe that God is who He says He is. That He does what He says He can do. That I am who God says I am. That I can do all things through Christ. That God’s Word is alive and active in me. (borrowed from Beth Moore’s bible study Believing God) Can I walk in that FAITH? Can you?