Unbelief

The Truth for Life Daily Devotional yesterday talked about unbelief...

I personally struggle most with this in the area of restoration.  It is so hard to look at what has seemingly always been and envision a different future.  Even when I see small changes, and even some big ones, it is still too big of a stretch to envision a fully restored future.  So when any signs of regression come up, I get discouraged and feel like I'm back at square one.

This has happened in some of my relationships in Guatemala.  I see things happen.  I get excited about those changes, and then something happens that makes me feel like everything has fallen right back to square one.

It's really hard to reach out in situations like that.  After all, if I am reaching out when the restoration isn't really happening, doesn't that just make me pathetic?  It's one thing to reach out when the reaching out means something.  It's quite another when I feel like it's ignored, neglected...

If only the restoration was more apparent.  Sometimes I get tired of looking, of hoping for change.  Sometimes it seems like it would have been better to have never hoped at all, to have been content with the present rather than have been taunted by this tantalizing image of restoration that never seems to fully come true at all.

Then I shake my fist at God and want to give up trying...I don't have the patience He has.  I can't cling to the small signs of change like He does.  I can't see them as the sure signs of what He is doing like He can.  I can't, or maybe I just don't.  Believing sometimes takes more effort than I find myself wanting to give.  Hope can be hard work.  Sometimes it's easier to lay down and play dead for a while, at least until I feel more "rested" and ready to start the hard work of hoping all over again.

I want to hope.  I want to believe.  I want to care.  Even if it does feel sometimes like I'm throwing my arms out, pouring my heart and soul into something that is making absolutely no difference...even if it feels like I'm pouring my life blood into an empty black hole.

But sometimes I also want to give up trying.  I want to see some sign that it's doing some good before I pour myself into it any longer.  Before I give I want to know it will be recieved and count for something...

Sometimes I don't like that God can see things in generations...sometimes I don't like that growth can stretch into years instead of merely a day or two.  It is too hard to see the growth when it stretches out across so many days (and weeks...and years). 

So I get discouraged, consider giving up. 

Charles Spurgeon wrote, "Dispel this lying traitor unbelief, for his only errand is to cut the bonds of communion and make us mourn an absent Savior."

I mourn and then get back up again.  So many unnecessary funerals, mourning things that aren't truly over.  It reminds me of a Newsboys song I used to really like when I was in college...I slip into the night, then stumble toward the light, wake up and try again... 

Of course, then there is the final line in that song, the part I like the best: I start losing heart, and then it comes again, lifted from despair by the prayers of someone...

Such a zig-zagged road on the path to redemption.  If only loving people didn't have to be so much work.