Tuesday 9/24/19 6:49
AM
I feel a little
like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in my spiritual life right now and my readings
today seem to confirm it. In a matter of minutes I can go from being secure in my faith to questioning
if it is all true.
I am scheduled to
have hip surgery in about three and a half weeks. As the day gets closer, I thought
I would start to worry about whether or not I would have a good outcome, but
that has not been the case. My psalm this week is Psalm 3 and verse 6 states, “I
lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the Lord sustains me.” When I read
that verse, I had a very strong sense of peace and confidence that everything
would be fine, regardless of the outcome of my surgery. God has sustained me throughout
my life, through both the good and the bad, and I’m certain he will continue to
do so.
A minute later I am
reading an excerpt from A Cry for
Mercy, by Henri Nouwen, in which
he describes what seems to him to be an enormous abyss between his insights about
God and his life. His words really describe the way I have felt over the past
couple of years. “It seems as if I am standing on one side of a huge canyon and
see how I should grow toward you, live in your presence and serve you, but cannot
reach the other side of the canyon where you are. I can speak and write, preach
and argue about the beauty and goodness of the life I see on the other side,
but how, O Lord, can I get there? Sometimes I even have the painful feeling
that the clearer the vision, the more aware I am of the depth of that canyon.
Am I doomed to die on the wrong side of the abyss? Am I destined to excite
others to reach the promised land while remaining unable to enter there myself?
… I can only keep trying to be faithful, even though I feel faithless most of
the time. What else can I do but keep praying to you, even when I feel dark; to
keep writing about you, even when I feel numb; to keep speaking your name, even
when I feel alone. Come, Lord Jesus, come.”
This waffling between
confidence and doubt; between having clear vision and groping in darkness; between
having an acute sensation of God’s presence and spiritual numbness or apathy is
frustrating. In Psalm 18 David describes the way God came to him when he was
fleeing from Saul, one of David’s dark times. “(God) parted the heavens and came
down; dark clouds were under his feet. … He made darkness his covering, his
canopy around him－the dark rain clouds of the sky. … He reached
down from on high and took hold of me; he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued
me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. They confronted
me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support. He brought me into a
spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.” I need to remind
myself that the darkness which frustrates me is the domain in which God moves. Lord,
be merciful to those who live in darkness and doubt.
