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A faithful presence of love in the absences of our city.

Context Matters

ContextMatters

In the sermon on Sunday, Justin reminded us of the common exasperated question the Israelites turned to God with in the midst of their exile—Why? In my own little world, I am always asking this question. Not to mention how much more tempting this question is when I look at the world around me, outside of my localized story. I never feel like I know what is going on, why things happen in these particularly inconvenient or painful ways. When I am in the middle of moments of confusion, chaos, disappointment, pain, and doubt my natural inclination is to sway toward questioning—what the heck? Couldn’t we have avoided this mess? Was this progression of life events absolutely necessary? I think I may have had a better plan…

Sometimes, in retrospect, God grants me little slivers of perspective. Moments where I humbly admit, “Oh…that’s why.” Often times, it is moments like these that help me to “recount all of His wonderful deeds” (Psalm 9:1). In his mercy, knowing my stubborn and prideful heart, God reveals His goodness to me on the other side of difficulty. I don’t deserve it, and he hasn’t promised it, but these little ah-ha moments help strengthen my trust that I don’t know best. His ways are indeed above mine. So even in the mess, I can look back on past experiences where God has come through, turned ashes to beauty, and accomplished more than I could have hoped or imagined.

These little moments of perspective are not guarantees, though. Sometimes, hard things happen, and they’re just hard, and no ah-ha moment comes later when you realize how every painful piece of the puzzle was indeed working together for your good. In these moments of suffering, when life feels like a formless void, in that deep darkness—God’s story provides context for ours. God’s story promises that sin and suffering will not win the day, but it doesn’t promise to wipe out all current sin and suffering that we face this side of heaven.

“The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” (Gen. 1:2).

Life can feel like a formless void when we encounter hurt, disappointment, or loss. Honestly, sometimes I feel this because of circumstances out of my control, because of the sin of others, and the brokenness of the world. But you know what, sometimes I feel like this because of my own sin. I think, really? This again? Would my husband still love me if he knew the darkness of my heart? Would my friends stick around if they saw this void in my life? Can I ever heal from this? Shame is a sneaky snare.

That is where God is hovering, and that means everything. God is present in our hearts, in the pain that we are scared to even give thought to because it’s too terrifying or shameful. God is there. We’re scared to ask that of anyone else, we’re afraid of connection, because our shame tells us “No, no one is going to stick around after they see that part of you.” The truth is, that’s a lie. God uses earthly relationships to heal us, because that is his ultimate model of healing, relationship, love, sacrifice. We get glimpses of the perfect relationship that God extends to his children in loving, safe, relationships on earth. They’re far from perfect, we’ll fail each other often, but they do exist.

Because God is present, hovering over the chaos of our lives, there is hope.  All of the localized stories of our lives are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves and redeems his children. There is hope for healing because of God’s story, even when we can’t see it in our own stories. Context matters.

~ Emily Leslie 

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