When Lfe Doesn't Measure Up (2) -- Hope Chronicles 74

Yesterday, I wrote the first bit about life not measuring up. If you haven't read it, scroll down to read that post.

That post ended by talking about how Sarah laughed at God but He still followed through with His promise and Sarah got what she most desperately desired. God is faithful to every promise, but sometimes we get a "Yes" and sometimes a "Wait" and sometimes a "No." The question becomes, will we still trust God with the dreams we hold most dear?

Scripture is clear that unmet hopes have a strong impact on us. Proverbs 13:12 states, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." Heart sick. It carries with it the connotation of something that impacts us to our deepest core. Perhaps that is what makes it so accurate. Our deepest longings are those that touch our core.

I shared Carolyn McCulley's quote yesterday. "When our prayers seem to go unheeded, we can learn to live in unexpectant apathy. We go through the motions, but we're not convinced that God will bless us. Bottom line, ugly truth: We don't really trust God."

It is an ugly truth isn't it? If you are a Christian, you may trust God with your salvation but fail to trust Him with your deepest desires. We pull back from admitting to others where our heart's desire lies. Eventually, we may decide to not even pray about it. Why keep praying if the answer is "No." We may secretly feel that God just doesn't care.

But nothing could be farther from the truth. The cross is answer enough to that.

Yes, it is. But it may not feel like it on an emotional level. Sarah got her heart's desire. But we must be careful here on two points. Sarah got exactly what she wished for even though it was not on her time table. This doesn't mean we just have be patient and we will get what we want. Admitting that can feel like giving up on God. That "unexpectant apathy" can lurk in the corner of our minds."

Admitting that our dreams may not look the way we envisioned is the beginning of allowing God to expand our dreams. I still hope (while quickly approaching 40) for a husband and kids born from my body, carried under my heart. I long for healed relationships but have no clue how to heal them. I dream of a thriving practice. The list could go on and on. But instead of holding the dreams myself, I try to let God hold them. Instead of demanding they be met in my way and in my time, I pray that God will give me the strength to allow Him creative license in my life. After all, I'm only borrowing this body from Him.

But do our dreams matter. Yes, they matter to us. More importantly, they matter to God. Repeatedly scripture tells us that God is clost to the brokenhearted and that one of the reason's Jesus came was to bind them up.

While God will comfort us, we also have a choice to make. Pslam 42 gives a great picture of hope in the midst of hard. The pslamist's tears are described as his food and his soul as downcast. But repeatedly he admonishes himself:

"Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God."

Instead of pretending that those dreams and things don't matter, the psalmist chooses three things:

• He pours out his soul to God -- including his suspicion (vs. 9) that God has forgotten him. He tells God all of his suffering.
• He chooses to remember God in the midst of pain.
• He chooses to praise the God who is his savior.

How do you hope in the midst of unmet longing? Talk to God. Remember all that God has done in your life. Praise God for who He is.

There is one more key to hope in verses 1-2 of this psalm. It says:

As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you O'God
My soul thirsts for God,
for the lviing God.
When can I go and meet with God?

God is pictured as life giving water. Proverbs 13:12 described longing fulfilled as a tree of life. The psalmist recognizes God as the fulfillment of all longing.

When we choose to hope in God, God gently holds our dreams adn then meets the deepest longings of our hearts with His presence. Sometimes it isn't until we drink deeply of hope that we realize how thristy we were or how satisfying God is.

Children with Questions -- Hope Chronicles 15

A little elf of a five-year-old came up to the counter tonight as I was cashiering at the bookstore. I love kids. I love talking to them and can often readily converse on some of their favorite things. Since it is Feb., things have slowed down. There is more of a chance to have a brief conversation than there was with the franticness of serving customers during the Christmas season.

I appropriately "ahhed" over the Dora the Explorer book and the princess book she came up with and asked how old she was . . . .

I must have put her at ease because she decided that she could ask me questions as well. "Where's your mommy?"

"Well, I don't have a mommy anymore." I could see the wheels in her head turning.

"Where are your kids?"

A bit of a gulp on my part. "I don't have any kids -- yet."

"Where's the other people?" she persisted.

"The other people?"

"You gotta live with people."

I checked for more customers, but there was no one in line. "No, I don't live with anyone. I'm a grownup and sometimes grownups live by themselves." This was obviously a new concept.

"You don't got nobody?"

Well, I didn't know how deep this conversation was going to go. Her mother was writing a check and didn't seem inclined to save me, so I decided to go with diversion. "Would you like a sticker?" She started to ask another question and I said, "How about another?"

I have spent a lot of time with children and had more than my share (considering I don't have kids) of the awkward questions ranging from manners, to bodily functions, to death, and even dating and sex. I try to be a safe person and answer as simply and straightfoward as I can (and fill in the parents or care givers regarding my answers . . . .) But I recognized this innocent conversation as one that has the potential to really trip me up. It hits me in the areas I experience the most longing in: day to day connection, family, and marriage and kids.

The little girl's perspective makes total sense to me. She lives in a world where mom and dad are the world. Children are typically egocentric (the world revolves around me). Actually, adults are egocentric too, but we have learned to mask it better! Her life is one of being a daughter (hence the mother question). The closest people to her are parents; thus, I got the children question. My guess is that she also has brothers or sisters, so how could anyone live alone?

Though I am an adult, I think I also define myself in terms of relationships. So, in the absence of the most key relationships (a rocky family of origin, the death of my mother, no husband, no kids) I can sometimes find myself floundering. Who am I in a world that defines us in relation to another or to a role?

Since it was slow tonight, I had a chance to ponder this. Yes, those relationships are ones that are key in the lives of many, possibly most, people. But the more than being key, being crucial, is my relationship to Jesus. It is He who loves me now and through eternity. It is God who is a father to the fatherless and the defender of widows (and singles) and orphans. It is Jesus who is ultimately my bridegroom. In each of these things and the daily blessings of friends and a half dozen kids I can love on and give back to their parents when they are tired or cranky, there is hope. My hope is in Jesus.

CS Lewis writes the following in Mere Christianity:

"If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and help others do the same."

The things I too often look to, a husband and kids and all of that, cannot satisfy my deepest longing. CS Lewis is right in that. While these things might be blessings and things I desire, they are not the be all-end all. No, that would be Jesus. The beginning and the end, the alpha and omega. I have hope because of who I am in relation to Jesus.