Tag Archives: Hope

Stuck Between Hope and Surrender

Posted on by

cloudy-sky-1384225600lk6 (1)

“God, I feel stuck!”

Those were my words to God that morning. I’d been wrestling with him in prayer for the millionth time. My pursuit of God seemed to be taking the form of a collision between two opposing dynamics. Like a surface gale fighting a strong ocean current headed the other way.

“God, I feel stuck!”

There are things we desire in this life. How we handle those things is one of the most profound tests of our faith. Like many, I remember when I first began feeling the weight of permanent disappointment in my mid-twenties. As I watched others’ suffering, the sense became suddenly clear: some stories just never have a happy ending. At least not in this life.

As I turned to Scripture and pushed into God’s opinion on such things, I discovered two opposing forces at work.

I’d see that Jesus spent a lot of time offering his help to our earthly troubles, from demon possession to a wedding party that ran out of wine. But I also learned that if even Jesus did not have his every prayer answered, we certainly won’t. “Many trials” are part of the deal (Acts 14:22).

“God, I feel stuck!”

Continue reading →

The Uncertainty of Life and the Certainty of Death: A Tribute to Joey Feek

Posted on by

joey

A few months ago, I started work as a legal assistant at a law firm, where we represent a lot of folks near death. Occasionally, I’ll be poring through a file and find a Last Will and Testament staring back at me, marked with that austere font associated with death. (I really don’t care what’s written on my tombstone – just write it in Comic Sans. Lighten the mood a little.) Many of the clients with whom I converse aren’t in the greatest of moods. They’re contemplating their mortality for the first time, and it’s scaring them, throwing them off their game, making them impatient and grasping.

They’re looking for something on which to seize.

I’m reminded of an article I read recently, lamenting that modern worship songs rarely speak of death, as the old hymns did. It made me think. Those were the days the world respected God. Now it thinks it’s evolved past the need for him, but I don’t buy it. Death will usually make anyone pause. A high-rise window, a worrisome lump, or a twist of the wheel is sometimes all that stands between us and the unknown. There are no atheists in a foxhole, and all that.

The world is looking for something on which to seize.

Enter Joey Feek.

Continue reading →