A Lesson In Faith.

The last few years have been a bit of adventure, more than a struggle, a wandering, a gypsy like existence that has taken us all around northern California and landed us back where we started.  It's easy to say that I want to understand life and our driftings.  It seems more than natural to want clarity, to want the why, when things aren't understood.  

It takes time to build a community, a home and each time I feel settled into one, I find myself pulled out, and thrust into another.  It's kept me entirely off balance and desperately questioning why we can't seem to take root.  

About a year ago I felt beyond my strength, trying to find the point.  Trying to clearly see God's plan, wondering if there was a greater one.  I felt abandoned, rejected, lost.  I had become completely separated from hope and needed answers.  

Nothing came. 

I simply began to understand that this - this is faith.  This not knowing, but pursuing.  Faithfulness when nothing seems to make sense.  Honor when everything feels dishonorable.  Belief when doubt swirls through my mind.

It is in the daily perseverance, of love, nurture, grace, joy, delight, hope that we define ourselves.  It is not in our friend groups, achievements, or perfections that we are refined.  It is the breaking of life's waves against our shores and being rooted on so great a foundation that we are unmoved.  We lift our heads to feel the spray and we trust, that the Great I Am who formed us, who breathed into our lungs, who called us out, has a plan that he is working through our lives.  He is the potter and we are the clay.  

But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'"  -Romans 9:20 NIV

I am often shaking my fist at the heavens, "Why God, why?"  More often on my lips than praise.

I seek answers and God seeks faith. 

And that breaks me every time.  I am not always given his reasons, I'm simply asked to trust and obey.  To walk by faith and not by sight.

I want to be that person, one who is led by God's voice.  I want to be faithful to the call, to follow the path that he has set before me.  I want to be whatever vessel he chooses to create in me.  

This requires the most difficult part, not just trust, but rejoicing in every season of life.  That what we can't see is as valuable, often more, than what we can.

I'm reminded of my longings to understand, as I reflect on our life, and the paths we've taken.  They haven't always been the one I would choose and often I feel pulled against my will.  Trying to be faithful and go where we're called, even when my heart is somewhere else.

In all of this, I am amazed at God's goodness, his faithfulness.  Doubt only robs the joy that comes through trust.

I don't have any answers to all the places we've journeyed, the trials we've overcome, the pain we've endured.  I only know that we are being refined by a great craftsman and if we continue to submit we will see the beauty of his finished work.

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  -Hebrews 11:1 KJV

At the end of this may my life be marked by faith, a joyful trust.