Tuesday’s Trust - Letter to My Readers

The (story) we sit down to write and the one we end up writing may be very different, just as the Jesus we grasp and the Jesus who grasps us may also differ. ~Madeleine L’Engle

Tuesday’s Trust

I apologize to you my readers. I fully intended to set out some scriptures to you to help you get a better glimpse of God's heart. So I did. I wrote out the scriptures; I even posted them in the early hours of today. But my post seemed lifeless. It appealed to the intellect, to give some sort of answers to many of our questions to God during grief. It talked about His amazing love for us, but I took the post down. Why did I take it down?

My Lord is living; He is alive, dynamic! The words that I wrote, although very true, were taken out of their proper context and thrown before you, to give you “answers” to some very tough questions we grievers often have of God. But THAT is not my experience of how God meets me in the middle of so many of my questions. And therefore, just spitting those “answers” out to you would not be true to my real message; spitting those “answers” out would not be fair to you my reader.

You deserve a better picture of God that is more true to how He presents Himself to me, fully engaging in my life, with His love overflowing, and a tenderness that surpasses all my expectations or what I could ever imagine from Him!

And so, the list of scriptures, although part of God’s Living Word, when set on my blog post, felt empty. They were separated from story, from the story of scripture, and from the story of my life when they ministered to me. So they rang hollow, emptied of the flesh they were poured into, the flesh of my life when I was in the throes of grief – in the throes of a mother’s worst desperation.

When I ask God my questions, He doesn’t give me “answers.”

He gives me Himself, not “answers”!

And He Himself is what satisfies, because when He comes to me, I know He loves me, and I know He loves my child. And how do I know that? Because He shows it; He doesn’t just “tell.” And that, after all, is the real answer to my need.

He owes none of us any explanations, but when we come in humble grieving before Him, He comes to us. He doesn’t have to, but He wants to. He hears our broken hearts, and it breaks His heart…because He loves us. And He attends to our wounds, our misconceptions, our hurt, our confusion, and our dismay.

Sure, I think over time, you may very well read each and every scripture I had posted earlier today. But hopefully, this time, you will hear them in their context: in story, in my story, in this grieving mother’s outcries to her Lord, and you will hear His loving responses—not always “answers,” but guides to get me back on track, of remembering who He really is, not who I, in the throes of grief, have made Him out to be.