Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD! O Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy! (Psalm 130:1-2 ESV)
Has that ever been you? I’ve been there. You are in the midst of a situation where all the exits are blocked. There seems to be no way out, and you wonder where God is in all of this and why is He not coming to your rescue. For once, just once, could He act like a genie in a bottle and “poof” remove all this chaos and pain? Just once could He respond when I clap my hands and immediately make it better? Where is the answer to “deliver us from evil” that we pray so often in the Lord’s Prayer?
I have been reading a new book by a fellow Christian author Kathy Macias called The Unexpected Christmas Hero. Though in places it seems to be a bit long and drawn out, the message is a good one. A young, middle class, stay at home mom and her children are left homeless when her husband dies. Between him being ill and out of work the bills pile up, and she loses everything. She wanders the street looking for shelters each night. Most of the book she is mad at God and wondering why He won’t get her out of this situation. Eventually she realizes He has been busy answering the big prayer by fulfilling little ones. It is a process that begins to draw her back to the faith she had as a child.
Sometimes we can’t see the forest for all the trees looming in front of us. We don’t see God acting because we are looking for the wrong thing- the big fix. We ignore that He is holding onto us, right there beside us. We don’t see the little things He is doing each day, nor do we see beyond the moment. Maybe he is creating a path out, just outside of our vision. Perhaps the best answer to our plight is not what we want.
Scott Krippayne sings that sometimes instead of calming the storm God calms His child instead.
May He calm you today with the faith that He is always there, no matter what, and is at work in Your life. Cry out, then listen for the whispering response. Seek, and He will be found.
