Today I caught myself dripping wet, standing under a tree, with no place to go.
The story is long, so I won't go into the details of my life being living proof of Murphy's law, but I just want you to picture this: white girl in a brown-skinned world, standing under a big tree, wet shirt, wet, dirty pants and feet. No where to go, and no clue about where I was actually headed. It was raining hard, and I didn't have an umbrella since this is the dry season. I was very sad, and emotionally feeble from a rough day.
It took about fifteen minutes for me to turn to God, and even then my heart was weak and all I could do was a muffled prayer in my head of, "God, please let this all stop."
In that second I realized that it didn't take cancer to make me feel sad. It didn't take a tsunami, losing my job, having my family die in a car wreck. It didn't take a crippling disease, holding a dying child in my arms, being engulfed by war, or even being imprisoned. I wasn't beaten or teased, never harassed. Yet, at that moment, all that was within me was ready to give up, as if I had suffered some atrocity.
Paul should have addressed his letters not to people who were really suffering, but just to some twenty-something girl who was stuck under a tree during an hour-long rainstorm, because if he had, maybe I would have realized that I could persevere through such an ordeal.
^ That last part was sarcastic, for those who are less inclined to read it that way.
At the same time, I checked Tim Challies' blog tonight to find his post about trials and suffering, which only did more to convict me about the "trials" I have to endure. This is from the Valley of Vision:
Father of Mercies, Hear me for Jesus’ sake.
I am sinful even in my closest walk with thee;
it is of thy mercy I died not long ago;
Thy grace has given me in the cross
by which thou hast reconciled thyself to me and me to thee,
drawing me by thy great love,
reckoning me as innocent in Christ though guilty in myself.
Giver of all graces, I look to thee for strength to maintain them in me,
for it is hard to practise what I believe.
Strengthen me against temptations.
My heart is an unexhausted fountain of sin,
a river of corruption since childhood days,
flowing on in every pattern of behaviour;
Thou hast disarmed me of the means in which I trusted,
and I have no strength but in thee.
Thou alone canst hold back my evil ways,
but without thy grace to sustain me I fall.
Satan’s darts quickly inflame me,
and the shield that should quench them easily drops from my hand:
Empower me against his wiles and assaults.
Keep me sensible of my weakness, and of my dependence upon thy strength.
Let every trial teach me more of thy peace, more of thy love.
Thy Holy Spirit is given to increase thy graces,
and I cannot preserve or improve them unless he works continually in me.
May he confirm my trust in thy promised help,
and let me walk humbly in dependence upon thee, for Jesus’ sake.
