“But the Voice of Truth tells me a different story, the Voice of Truth says
“Do not be afraid.” ~ Casting Crowns
A few days later, I again sat watching the dawn. The sun was just beginning to rise, painting pale pink bands across the horizon and turning the sky above a deep, midnight blue. The moon was still out, a bright crescent, but I could also see its remainder in the shadows. I sat quietly and then whispered, breaking the silence:
“What will today bring?”
I felt as if I were preparing to march out to battle and on the other side of the conflict would be either joy and victory or despair and sorrow.
So much had happened the day before; so many disturbing e-mails from our agency. Driven to the brink of desperation, I had spent most of the day fasting and praying and as I sat there in the pre-dawn stillness, I was so glad I had done so. I did not know how I would have managed to hold together if I had not.
I thought about how we had been burned over and over again in the adoption. Even the day before, a new hinderance had arisen. It seemed that was how it had continually been; as soon as we fought our way through to the next door and began to step through, we would repeatedly find it cruelly slammed in our faces. I reached the point where I began to plead with God to just close the door earlier the next time rather than wait until we stood on the threshold.
As I sat there, pondering these things, it occurred to me that it is ingrained in the nature of a human being to learn caution from pain. When one experiences pain, it sends a message to the brain, “Don’t do that again!”
And so it had been with us. We would hope and find ourselves bitterly disappointed time and again. There were times I feared I had reached the point of such trauma that I would be unable to hope again, and yet, despite all logic or reason, hope again I did.
That morning, as the sun rose, I stood once again on the precipice and faced the same question. “Do I jump off and hope again?”
Then, God stepped into my contemplations and reminded me of the truth.
First of all, every time I jumped, I leapt to a sure hope because underneath me were The Everlasting Arms. Secondly, as the author of all natural law, God was able to supersede it at any time. There was a name for this phenomenon: A miracle.
So, each time God enabled me to hope again, it was a moment in which I was privileged to experience his Divine movement in my life.
The thought made me wish I could, for a moment, see the physical realm through the eyes of God. “How many times, day after day,” I wondered, “does the child of God face the choice of yielding to God or the flesh? How many battles in the spiritual realm are fought moment by moment?”
And as the moon begrudgingly yielded his place to the sun, I sighed and turned my heart fully towards Christ. Abandoning myself to His will and care, I dared hope for his faithful deliverance once again.
