11 Feb 2011
It’s better in the dark
Letting go of my torches
This week I have been reflecting a bit on the wrestle of faith.
I realised this week there is part of me that expects the faith journey to get easier, somehow to get to a point where trust is an easy thing.
So often I feel like I am on a knife-edge between hope and despair, on one side seeing the remarkable hand of God in every aspect of my life, and on the other seeing pain, chaos and failure.
I was struck by Isaiah 50:10-11, how apparently walking in the dark is a good thing when contrasted with trusting your own view of the world.
Who among you fears the LORD
and obeys the word of his servant?
Let the one who walks in the dark,
who has no light,
trust in the name of the LORD
and rely on their God.
But now, all you who light fires
and provide yourselves with flaming torches,
go, walk in the light of your fires
and of the torches you have set ablaze.
This is what you shall receive from my hand:
You will lie down in torment.
There is no easy way to walk in the dark. It is so much easier to grab a torch.
This is so counter intuitive.
I want torches. I want to know where I am and where I am going.
I don’t want to be in the dark.
Honestly though, I believe this is the wrestle of faith, learning to be content with not knowing, learning to trust a God who works in ways that don’t always make sense to me, and don’t always make life easier for me.
I wish that trusting God would mean that things would be less stressful, but walking in the dark is much more stressful that walking in the light of your own way of seeing the world.
Ultimately though, God is there, and whatever I think I see through my own eyes is so much smaller and less real than what he sees.
Life makes sense when you walk in the dark and hold His hand. He knows what he is doing even if I don’t.
This is so much the journey Matt. I have been pressing forward to the moment when life will be less complex and answers come. Then the realisation dawned that when that happens there’ll be no faith needed. I notice that I can go into a day with fear, hanging onto threads of faith, and at the end come through, not with everything answered but more complete, satisfied and glad. It is counter-cultural – our whole instinct is to simplify life and make it safer. But those torches don’t light the way! Thanks.
Anne Nanscawen
February 11th, 2011 at 11:04 pmpermalink
Yep. It’s so much better to trust the one who can really see what’s going on. At Christmas, I was putting my newer and wider car into my Dad’s narrow driveway and was going to have to navigate past the bit where the gates stick out and round the two chimneys and I remembered that last time I ended up folding in my mirrors. So I told my Dad that was the way we’d done it. He said, “But how are you going to see?” I said, “I wasn’t planning on seeing. I was planning on watching you and following your directions.” And that’s how we did it! Because he’s my Dad and I know him and I trust him, it wasn’t difficult. In fact, it was much less stressful than doing it all by myself. It struck me at the time, that this was exactly how I should be in my relationship with God,.. because He’s my Dad too, thanks to Jesus I can know Him, and if I look back upon my life, then I know I can trust Him too.
Jeannette Windsor
February 11th, 2011 at 11:29 pmpermalink