I don’t know about you, but there can be days where one does not really feel up to trying.
Trying to be good and kind.
Trying to be loving and forgiving.
Trying to chase dreams and callings.
Trying to give of yourself just one more drop of patience.
You just sort of feel like throwing up your hands and saying, “I give up!”
It could be in your efforts in your career, or in your family, or with your friends, or just in your life itself.
So, why try? Why keep pouring your heart into your life when sometimes it just seems to bleed you dry?
We can feel ashamed of this feeling. After all it kind of is a selfish one. On the other hand it can feel justified. We pour and pour and pour and pour and when we seem to have no return we can reach a point where we just wish to stop. We have no more to give anyway, and nothing is happening, so what is the point?
Why keep writing words if no one reads them? Why keep doing good when no one appreciates it? Why keep trying to live a better life when life itself seems set to make you miserable?
And then you see people around you that do seem to have it together, who do seem to be getting a return on their investments in life, and it makes you even more discouraged.
Hopeless.
And then you get people who are even more annoying, the ones that quote scriptures about how God has this fantastically great plan for you and all this good stuff is going to happen. They mean to be encouraging, but you just want to tell them to take their “good stuff” and “stuff it.”
I don’t completely disagree with these people. I have in fact been one of them many times. But they don’t tend to show the whole picture with their encouraging words that promise that someday there will be a return on your long investment.
Because sometimes there isn’t one. No answer. No blessing. No return.
At least not here.
For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly you will find me. I will be found by you,” Jer 29:11-12
It’s the verse these well meaning folks quote to us. A passage given to Judah as they are sent off into captivity. A promise that after a certain amount of time God will bring them home and prosper them.
But let’s be honest here.
Not everyone made it home, many died in captivity.
The Bible is full of people who were given promises they were never to see. Abraham was promised descendants that would fill the earth but it took years before his promised son was even given him.
How did they do it? How did they keep believing in a Promise they would never see fulfilled?
Well, quite honestly they had a breed of Faith we barely know exists.
All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. Hebrews 11:13
Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated- the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect. Hebrews 11:36-40
What is this faith? Really? These people suffered things we can barely imagine in our modern world. We call ourselves persecuted in America when we are simply ridiculed. What kind of faith is this that stands strong when all is robbed from them? What is this faith they are willing to suffer for? If this is faith, do we even have it?
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1
So what do we hope for? What is our hope in? What do we not see?
Is our hope in a successful career? Provision for our family? A nice house? Dreams fulfilled?
Or in something more?
Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For IN THIS HOPE we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Romans 8:23-25 (emphasis mine)
The redemption of our bodies? Our adoption to sonship? Being brought near to God?
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39
We need a perspective shift. Instead of looking at the immediate, the seen, and placing our hope for fulfillment in it, we need a more eternal perspective.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
The truth is anything and everything that we can put our hope in in this world will not fulfill us. So if we are looking for validation in a return here it will always fall short. We weren’t made for here.
And out of this hope, this joy of redemption, we are again happy to give, to love, to chase callings, to live.
Because we understand that even if we don’t see a return here, we’ve followed where He led us, and that is all that matters.
~Joy Aletheia Stevens
Photo Credit: by Gwen Quinlan (CC BY 2.0)
Photo Credit: by Michael Gil (CC BY 2.0)
Photo Credit: by StooMathiesen (CC BY 2.0)
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