Moving home,
with all its packing and stresses, changing workplaces, and having absorbed our
fair share of shock and complicated grief, leaves us tired, but not without
hope. Our hope is Jesus.
But it’s too easy to
treat Jesus as the clichéd solution maker. Jesus doesn’t work that way.
This time of year, many
people are going through change.
It can be easier
than we think to start to question our hope. Doubting becomes us in a second
having endured one frustrating event too many. Beset by dramas so often so
unexpected we can really feel we’ve been tested beyond our capacity to cope.
Quickly we are
pushed to the point of reacting – and emotions can take us in many different
and unpredictable directions, for instance, sobbing, screaming, withdrawing or
whining.
Having reacted we
will have possibly overstepped the mark. Disappointed with ourselves for having
hurt a loved one with something we said or how we reacted, or having said
something to someone like a peer at work, we now have to make bold restitution.
As if things weren’t bad enough!
Or, perhaps we’ve
come to be depressed because we’ve become worn down emotionally and
spiritually. Our thinking has responded to how we’ve felt and we are feeling
more negative than usual and we can’t escape these feelings.
***
Getting up off the floor when we have
been down and out for a while can seem too hard. Every effort looks laborious.
We need to challenge our thinking.
Jesus came to remind us, that,
through his crucifixion and resurrection, he’s made a way for hope in what
seems hopeless. He’s made a way for peace even in torment.
Jesus said that “though me you shall
have peace” and that we can “be of good cheer” because he’s overcome the world.
When we choose to have Jesus inhabit
us by the Holy Spirit we are able to demonstrated radical trust to consider our
trials pure joy.
Trust is obedience. And obedience –
doing what Jesus says without question or complaint – is the way to an innovative
way through any problem.
Sometimes we just need space to be
real; a few minutes, an hour, a day.
But, as we hold two strategies
together – the willingness to trust God without question, and the ability to
back the pressure off ourselves – we have the way forward without backing
ourselves into a corner.
***
Being gentle with ourselves is wisdom
when hope fades. Just a little space makes a great difference. And trusting God
is moving forward into hope.
© 2015 S. J. Wickham.
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